98 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 



is a great old conch shell, kept filled with 

 fresh water for the birds. The narrow 

 border that runs along under the Oak- 

 room window is my trouble and my dear 

 delight. I hope nothing will ever lead me 

 to call it a 'herbaceous border!' It has 

 become so much the fashion to call every- 

 thing herbaceous which is not 'bedding 

 out,' that the meaning of the word is 

 usually lost sight of, and all kinds'of woody 

 perrenials are, so it seems to me, included 

 in the 'herbaceous border.' The phrase 

 also seems to leave out all the poetry of 

 the garden. Not, I think, more than a 

 dozen or fifteen years old, it dates from 

 the first rage for yellow calceolarias and 

 pyrethrums and the carpetings, when 

 * herbaceous ' things were admitted only 

 somewhere out of the way by sufferance. 

 May this be the first and last time I 

 have to write ' Herbaceous border ! ' 



Under the window a cotoneaster bears 

 good promise of its pink liliputian apple 

 crop for the blackbirds in October. And 

 then there is a little wilderness of wood 

 strawberries. They want to have it all 



