14 A GARDEN OF HERBS 



farther opinion and directions of the author when they 

 please." Sir John Hill's works on herbs are so learned that 

 it is refreshing in the middle of one of them to light on this 

 remark : " I was introduced in Yorkshire to one Brewer, who 

 has contrived a Dress on Purpose for Herbalising, and had 

 a mask for his face and pads to his knees that he might creep 

 into the thickets." This, alas, is all he tells us of this 

 enthusiast. 



But whether fashioned on the old-world model or made 

 just according to the fancy of the owner, a herb garden 

 , should be essentially a garden enclosed; a sanctuary of a 

 sweet and placid pleasure ; a garden of peace and of sweet 

 scents, filled with all the humble, lovable old plants one so 

 rarely sees, and which never look really happy in company 

 with showy modern plants. A modern herb garden might 

 be made surrounded by banks (such as one sees round 

 Devonshire cottage gardens), and these could be smothered 

 with herbs violets, cowslips, borage, wild strawberries, 

 germander, betony, yarrow, centaury, wild thyme, and so 

 on . If there was room on one bank even nettles, dandelions, 

 lesser celandine, daisies, etc., might be allowed to grow, not 

 with the abashed furtive air they assume in the presence of 

 that terribly grand and merciless person the gardener, but 

 spreading themselves cheerfully and comfortably in the sun, 

 happy in the knowledge that even if the aforesaid gardener 

 rejects them, their owner realises they have virtues not to 

 be found amongst the inhabitants of the largest and tidiest 

 kitchen garden. And how beautiful the garden itself could 

 be with every variety of lavender, rosemary, bergamot, 

 hyssop, thyme, fennel, rue, marjoram, lad's love, sweetbriar, 

 and all the old sweet-scented cabbage and Provence roses ; 

 even if these were the only inhabitants of the old-fashioned 

 herb garden included in it. There should be nothing of 

 the " grand air " in a herb garden. As Rousseau wisely 

 observed : " The ' grand air ' is always melancholy in a 

 garden, it makes one think of the miseries of the man who 

 affects it. ... The two sides of the alleys will not be always 

 exactly parallel, its direction will not be always in a straight 



