The borders great strong tufts are growing and covering the ground. 



February In our warm Surrey soil all this comes to pass early and more 



Flower happily than in colder, heavier soils, and the weeds that cause us 



Shows so muc h trouble later on are very beautiful in early Spring. The 



only thing which makes spring gardening really ugly, I think, 



is when bulbs are grown out of clean, bare, well-weeded beds. 



My garden, generally speaking, looks brown and colourless 

 in early Spring. The large trees are too close together to stretch 

 their brown arms handsomely against the pale sky, though their 

 edges shiver in the wind. One piece of spring gardening I have 

 which gives me great pleasure year by year. It is a broad grass 

 border by the side of a gravel path under these self-same trees, 

 most of them tall Spanish chestnut. From February to May it 

 is really a pretty sight. Snowdrops there are to begin with, but 

 they never grow luxuriantly in our soil. At the bottom of this 

 green border, where the path turns and the long sweep of grass 

 catches the Eastern sunshine, there is a very good Crocus effect. 

 First, yellow Crocuses all in a mass coming through the brown 

 fronds of dead ferns ; then a shady place with Dog-tooth Violets 

 and Daffodils, that come later in the year ; then a mass of the 

 dark purple Crocus, fading away into a mass of pale grey ones 

 slightly striped ; round a corner, some more yellow ones, into 

 which now and then appears, as a wanderer, a lilac or a white 

 bunch with five or six flowers. The procession ends with a 

 quantity of pure white Crocus. The yellow ones are perhaps 

 the least pretty in the grass, but one loves them as they come 

 out the first ; and in the ferns and grass, curiously enough, the 

 sparrows leave them alone, though they attack them savagely in 

 bare beds. Jack Frost's icy fingers do not turn the rims of the 

 purple ones white under the protection of the trees, as they do 



6 



