SOILS, PLANTINGS, PRUNINGS 23 



to think that if you put a plant no matter 

 what into a border, no matter how, or 

 where, or when it is bound to grow, and 

 that it is somebody's or something's fault if it 

 does not. So it is, most assuredly. But the 

 fault does not lie at the door generally assigned 

 to it. For half the failures in gardens which 

 are attributed to mice, birds, damp, frost, 

 drought, nurserymen, and what not, are simply 

 due to the ignorance, carelessness, or parsi- 

 mony of the owner, who will not take the 

 trouble, or incur the expense, or learn the 

 lesson, of how to enrich or how to lighten 

 the soil of his garden, in order to suit the 

 requirements of this or that plant. 



And the land itself needs food. I came 

 across a deeply impressive sentence one day 

 in a Russian novel, horrible in its poignant 

 truth, where the little daughter of some ruined 

 landowner overhears the cry of one of her 

 father's labourers : " How can we work when 

 we are hungry, when the oxen are hungry, 

 when the land is not fed." And in terror 

 the child perceives that their land itself must 



