204 THE BAMBOO GARDEN CHAP. 
those all-absorbing borders, of which there are hundreds upon 
hundreds of yards. All the treasures of the uttermost ends 
of the earth seem to be gathered together there; but none is 
allowed to gladden the eye by showing off its true beauty. 
Background there is none ; and if there be six, or sixty, or any 
number of one species, they are all dotted about singly, 
separated from their fellows, and compelled to consort with 
any uncongenial stranger that chance or the gardener’s trowel 
may have established by their side. In winter, when the 
leaves have died down, the labels in the long dreary borders 
look like a procession of Lilliputian tombstones—a very 
necropolis of plants. Here are love, money, and labour 
lavishly expended, and all lost for want of a little attention to 
that teaching which Nature so unmistakably gives us. Ifa 
man is making a pleasaunce for himself, then, as it appears to 
me, beauty is the first object, and this in any garden may best 
be obtained by having a few varieties liberally displayed in 
such a framework of other plants as will set them off to the 
best advantage. If a botanical collection be the aim in view 
that is another matter; but then the plants should be set out 
according to families and in purely scientific array. That is 
a great and a laudable object. But to turn what should be 
a garden of delight into a mere living illustration of the 
advertising lists—to look upon rarity and crackjaw names as 
the highest goal of the gardener’s ambition, that is a view 
with which I for one have no sympathy. And yet it is a 
vice of which there are many amateurs. Fiends there are 
who haunt flower shows, and are assiduous attendants at 
lectures, bores from whom there is no escape—mostly feminine, 
but some apparently neuter—flinging painfully-acquired 
