CHAPTER XXXII. 



LABOURS FOR GOOD OR EVIL: DRAINING: ROTATION: MONOTONY: 

 GLASS : MOVING EARTH. 



THE cost of the making and keeping of the gardens and pleasure 

 grounds of the British Isles is too vast to realise. No other people in 

 the world spend so generously on their gardens and plantations 

 not a selfish end either, as all noble planting and gardening add to the 

 beauty of the land. In every case it is therefore worth while asking, 

 does the labour so freely given work for good ends for ugliness or 

 beauty, waste in stereotyped monotony, or days well spent in adding 

 to the treasures of our gardens and plantings, both in enduring variety 

 and in picturesque effects; pictures, in fact, all round the year? 

 There is immense and hideous waste in misapplied labour and bad art, 

 and therefore some of these enemies of good work deserve a little 

 thought. 



Most garden lovers strive for an ideal soil, but this does not always 

 lead to happy results, and, even if we could have it, would only lead to 



monotony in vegetation. No doubt many will seek 



Soils good and at all costs for the soil called the best, but the 



bad. wisest way is rather to rejoice in and improve the 



soil fate has planted us on. A good deep and 

 free loam is best for many things, and for high cultivation 

 or market work, deep valley soils are almost essential, but we often 

 see poor peats giving excellent results from a flower gardening 

 point of view, in enabling us to grow with ease many more 

 kinds of plants than could be grown on heavy soil. How fertile 

 sand may become with good cultivation is shown by the fact that 

 some of the very best soils for hardy plants are those that have been 

 poor sea sand, but improved by cultivation, and sometimes such soils 

 are drought-resisting, as on reclaimed seashore lands. Yet now and 

 then we see certain sandy soils absolutely refuse to grow Roses and 

 Carnations, and in such cases it is often better to give up the struggle. 

 Chalky hills are wretched for trees and some shrubs, but there are few 

 soils more congenial to garden vegetation than some chalky soils, and 

 chalk tumbling into a valley soil is often excellent. In limestone 



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