to the garden, are usually away in London at the supreme An Aber- 

 moment of garden ultramarine. I remember a fine castle deenshire 

 garden, which once I revisited after an absence, and missed the Garden 

 long, rich lines of Gentian that had bordered every walk. The 

 lady of the castle told me " they all were done away with, as 

 she never saw them in flower. She never came North until quite 

 the latter end of July, so where was the use of keeping them ? " 



There is a beautiful old garden in Aberdeenshire, not 

 known to fame, where long ago I used to delight in a quaint 

 pattern of garden beds set out with narrow walks. Each bed 

 was sunk in the same way as in the ancient gardens of the 

 Alcazar in Seville, and each enclosed in a box hedge about two 

 feet high. One of these queer beds was filled with tiny white 

 Campanula, another with low Scotch Roses, and so on with 

 the rest. Each had a different plant inside, and all of old- 

 fashioned kinds. It was rather hard to see the flowers so deep 

 down within their little box hedges. One had to go up quite 

 close to see them at all. It is all charming in its way, but 

 one would hardly advise the setting out nowadays of so queer a 

 parterre. 



In that garden was a great mound, if it might be so 

 described, of white Wood-Honeysuckle. Who could forget the 

 summer bloom of that mass of perfumed loveliness ? How the 

 bees worshipped it ! Then the flower-borders were full of 

 interest, filled with strange, alien plants rare plants gathered 

 from out-of-the-way gardens far and near, or from the unwont 

 collections of an army of garden friends. There in autumn 

 hung the great fruit the size of a hen's egg of Podophilum, 

 glowing scarlet underneath its dark green foliage, and tall 

 purple Verbascum, and a series of rare species of Solomon's Seal 



F 41 



