CHAPTER III 



HOME WOODS 



AT the beautiful gate of the woods one happiness 

 awaits us, in being free from vain considerations about 

 ' styles '. Our home wood should be only a nobler kind 

 of garden, and may be so treated without spoiling its 

 value as a wood. We may see on a spring day in one 

 place more beauty in a wood than in any garden, from 

 the bushes and plants wild in the place : Furze, Crab, 

 Cowslip, Wood Hyacinth, Primrose on northern slopes, 

 Marsh Marigold in wet copses, and Sloe. But this great 

 beauty often has to be sought through briery paths and 

 dense underwood, and the best of it is not easily brought 

 into relation to the home grounds. In many country 

 places, where people labour for years with a wretched 

 stereotyped kind of garden, they take no trouble to see 

 the beauty of the wild things that grow near naturally 

 and without cost or care. The supreme beauty of our 

 native trees is often a sealed book to them, while they 

 perhaps spend time and money on trees that are tender, 

 ugly, and useless in our land either for wood or garden. 



The wood is a mighty worker for man, a precious gift 

 of beauty as well as profit. For the wood, unlike the 

 farm, wants few costly labourers, no weeding or plough- 

 ing, finds its own fertilizers, its own watering, its own 

 shade and shelter, all this and much more, and without 

 the aid of the colleges now thought necessary to make 

 the good gardener or farmer. If all the wit of man, 



