The Garden 



smile quietly when people say, " Of course your Irises do 

 so well all along by the river, as they get moisture from 

 it," for I know those beds under the old Yews are about 

 the driest in Europe. The water is there in the river bed, 

 but as a gardener once said to me, " Yes, sir, there's 

 plenty of water but it's very low down." I often think of 

 his plaint when I too have been dragging it up in fat, 

 lumpy water-cans, and wish I had standpipes and hose 

 and sprinklers and the many luxuries of people lucky 

 enough to have water high up, on the top of their own 

 hill, like good old Tom Smith's ideal nursery at Newry, or 

 in the water-tower of the neighbouring town. I must 

 enumerate my difficulties, or my readers will not appre- 

 ciate the skill and energy necessary here to grow the 

 things they have to tear up as weeds in their own gardens, 

 and one of my troubles is the well-known hardness of 

 New River water. Derived mainly from chalk wells, it is 

 so hard that one feels it would be scarcely a miracle to 

 walk on it, and when the well nearest to us is in full work 

 there is a distinct bluish-green colour in the river, rather 

 attractive to look at, but as I have found by experience, 

 rendering it an absolute poison for certain calcifuge plants. 

 A liberal dose of New River water given in a spirit of 

 kindness to a collection of dwarf Rhododendrons during 

 a time of drought killed all but one in about a fortnight. 

 The survivor is with me still, being evidently a lime lover, 

 a hybrid of R. hirsutum. 



With these limitations to the possibilities of watering 

 and manuring I dread a spell of drought, and always 

 prefer that a garden visitor coming for the first time 

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