THE PLEASURE OF A GARDEN 

 BY JOSEPH ADDISON 



I AM ONE, YOU MUST KNOW, WHO AM A natural 

 looked upon as a humorist in gardening. I have 

 several acres about my house, which I call my 

 garden, and which a skilful gardener would not 

 know what to call. It is a confusion of kitchen 

 and parterre, orchard and flower-garden, which 

 lie so mixt and interwoven with one another, 

 that if a foreigner, who had seen nothing of our 

 country, should be conveyed into my garden 

 at his first landing, he would look upon it as a 

 natural wilderness, and one of the uncultivated 

 parts of our country. My flowers grow up in 

 several parts of the garden in the greatest lux- 

 uriancy and profusion. I am so far from being 

 fond of any particular one, by reason of its rar- 

 ity, that if I meet with any one in a field which 

 pleases me, I give it a place in rny garden. By 

 this means, when a stranger walks with me, he 

 is surprised to see several large spots of ground 

 covered with ten thousand different colours, 

 and has often singled out flowers he might have 

 met with under a common hedge, in a field, or 

 in a meadow, as some of the greatest beauties 

 of the place. The only method I observe in 

 this particular is to range in the same quarter 



