YOU ask me to write about Spring and Spring gardens. Spring. 

 What a worn-out subject, and how old ! And yet, Renewal 

 although some of us may not realise it, how eternally o f Hope 

 new even to those near the end of life, who have seen many, 

 many Springs, and watched the awakening of the earth year 

 after year. 



If it is a saddening season for the old, and perhaps now 

 and then even for the young, this renewal of hope ; for the 

 gardener, at any rate, it is a happy time, full of fruition, the 

 reward of past thought and work. For, as the Dutch raise 

 gardens from heaps of sand, and cities out of the bosom of the 

 waters, so our spring gardens are in great part the result of our 

 autumn labours, thought, work, and money spent. How rare 

 in England, and how appreciated, is a really beautiful Spring 

 such as we were blessed with in 1904. Slow and sure, full of 

 promise, developing gradually with very few prematurely warm 

 days and yet no severe checks. There were no dangerously 

 cruel hard frosty nights such as make one turn in one's bed 

 and long to rush out and quickly cover some early Camellia in 

 flower, or protect the fat buds of a tree Peony, just as one 

 would seize with warm hands the pink feet of some precious 

 baby, if they were cold. The nights should be just cool 

 enough to keep things back, as says the old French proverb, 

 "The prettiest April wears a wreath of Frost." Then the 

 velvety buds open safely and slowly. Ordinary people com- 

 plain, but the cautious gardener says approvingly : " It's a 

 backward Spring." There have only been a few days, balmy 

 and divine like the spring of the poets. 



Even in towns every one appreciates the first change 

 when January days begin to lengthen, and the first really fine 



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