44 THE DELIGHTS OF GARDENS 



A HUMORIST IN GARDENING 



(From, "The Spectator ") 



I AM one, you must know, who am looked upon as 

 an humorist in gardening. I have several acres 

 about my house, which I call my garden, and which 

 a skilful gardener would not know what to call. It 

 is a confusion of kitchen and parterre, orchard and 

 flower garden, which lie so mixed and interwoven 

 with one another, that if a foreigner who had seen 

 nothing of our country should be conveyed into my 

 garden at his first landing, he would look upon it 

 as a natural wildness, and one of the uncultivated 

 parts of our country. My flowers grow up in several 

 parts of the garden in the greatest luxuriancy and 

 profusion. I am so far from being fond of any par- 

 ticular one, by reason of its rarity, that if I meet 

 with any one in a field which pleases me, I give 

 it a place in my garden. By this means, when a 

 stranger walks with me, he is surprised to see 

 several large spots of ground covered with ten 

 thousand different colours, and has often singled 

 out flowers that he might have met with under a 

 common hedge, in a field, or in a meadow, as some 

 of the greatest beauties of the place. The only 

 method I observe in this particular, is to range in 

 the same quarter the products of the same season, 

 that they may make their appearance together, and 

 compose a picture of the greatest variety. 



JOSEPH ADDISON. 



