4 PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF GARDENING [CH. 



particular branch of the art, so that you may make the 

 most of it. While, if there is no glass available, that 

 very fact seems to indicate that you should, at all 

 events at first, confine your attention to an herbaceous 

 border, and to the picturesque arrangement of your 

 grass and evergreens ; and so far from this being beneath 

 notice, I should say the amateur who deserved most 

 praise was one who had managed to transform a bare, 

 ugly enclosure whether a big piece of ground in the 

 country or a small patch of garden in the city and 

 turned it into something on which the eye might rest 

 with satisfaction. There is no excuse for ugliness while 

 it is possible by a simple and natural disposition of a 

 few flat rocks to break the monotony of garden walls, 

 and to contrive a footpath which shall wend its way 

 between the jutting stones, and in some such way do 

 duty for the vulgar, conventional, commonplace, rect- 

 angular gravel walk. So soon as the Ivy, Clematis, and 

 Virginian Creeper have covered the walls, and some 

 clumps of Rodgersia and Scolopendrium ferns have been 

 planted between the strata of rock, your unpretending 

 garden need not fear comparison with many a more 

 favoured nook. 



And now for some details : 



Composts. As the artist must have his store of 

 pigments from which he can produce the various colours 

 that lend such a charm to his pictures, so the gardener 

 will have a special department in which are stored the 



