The Garden 



drainage to build one's house upon of course, and when it 

 is a good red binding sample, a positive luxury for garden 

 paths. There the advantages end, however, for although 

 we have made plenty of paths, gravelled them unstintingly, 

 and got out a good deal of the material from the garden 

 itself, there still remain untold supplies below, and much 

 of it so coarse and unprofitable that getting it out entails 

 carting it away and finding some pond or hollow that 

 needs filling to justify the labour. This coarse gravel 

 discouraged all my childish schemes for digging ponds, 

 gold mines, and that passage to the Antipodes that generally 

 has to be tried during some flowerless month in the 

 children's gardens. Perhaps it turned my mind off from 

 all thoughts of engineering and drove it to the surface and 

 the tilling thereof. As in our deepest excavations in all the 

 upper part of the garden, we have never yet got through 

 this vein of coarse gravel, perhaps I may be forgiven for a 

 belief that our gravel runs right through the centre of the 

 earth to our antipode whatever it is ; I don't know, but I 

 hope it is New Zealand, because then perhaps the water that 

 soaks away so quickly here may be interesting hot geysers 

 at the other side and my nourishing manurings conveyed 

 to the roots of antipodean Cabbage Palms and Ratas. 



The greatest evil of a gravel subsoil is its unsuitability 

 for deep roots. Trees will not enter it, but they turn 

 their main roots out over its surface, and so go a-hunting 

 into all the newly dug and enriched beds. 



Old trees are precious possessions in gardens, and 

 must be respected, but I do feel cross with them when I 

 find an underground bird's nest of strong, fibrous roots 

 II 



