io6 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN 



Pride, is a most desirable, useful plant ; it is the better 

 for dividing every two years. It travels well picked, and 

 is so pretty and decorative in water ; it looks well with 

 large red Oriental Poppies, with no green at all. Silene, 

 too, looks well with it in small glasses, for a change. 



Deutzia crenata is a charming shrub, and flowering 

 well this year. Unless the garden is very small, anyone 

 who lives in the country in spring ought to have it. 

 There is so little room for shrubs in a very small plot of 

 ground, and no garden can be beautiful except when the 

 lie of the ground and the surrounding circumstances are 

 beautiful. The only ambition that can be indulged in 

 with a small flat ground is to grow the greatest number 

 of healthy plants possible in the least amount of space, 

 and so secure continuous and varied flowers for nine 

 months of the year. 



The planning and laying-out of a small garden without 

 great natural advantages ought to be as practical and 

 simple as possible, a mere improvement on the cottage 

 garden : A small, straight path of brick or paving-stone, 

 or grass or gravel, though that is the least desirable of 

 all to my mind. Let beds be on either side. If you have 

 shrubs round the edge of the garden to hide the paling, 

 have a grass path in front of the shrubs, and then square 

 or long beds in the middle. Never have a small lawn 

 with beds cut in that ; nothing gives so much labour and 

 so little satisfaction as beds cut out of grass, and what 

 makes them uglier still is bordering them again with 

 some plant. The flowers are much better out in the 

 open, away from the moisture-devouring shrubs. In 

 gardening, as in many things in life, let your wits improve 

 on what is rather below you ; never look at the squire's big 

 garden in your neighbourhood, and then try and imitate it 

 in small. Nothing makes a more charming edging for 

 beds, if you have gravel paths, than large flat stones ; 



