My Garden in Spring 



should do so before the middle of June. A wise old 

 farmer once said to me, in speaking of the new Parlia- 

 mentary candidate, " Why, he promises 'em anything, a 

 shower of rain every night and a shower of manure on 

 Sundays." I have ever since felt that the fulfilment of 

 those promises is what my garden and I need, from June 

 to October anyway. 



As gardens go, I suppose this must be called an old 

 one, for as far as I can make out it seems to be about 

 400 years since a certain row of Yews were planted. 

 They are in a crescent-shaped line, and the course of the 

 river follows the same bend. Those who are knowledg- 

 able about the rate of growth of Yews in a hungry soil 

 declare them to be older than the river. So it seems 

 probable that their owner in 1609, to save his trees, 

 insisted on this otherwise meaningless bend in the river. 

 It was not until another century had passed that my 

 Huguenot ancestors bought the property and settled down 

 here, and I was always told that two quaint old Flemish 

 figures in carved stone were in the garden when they 

 bought it. Huguenots ought to have left a heritage of 

 Mulberry and Catalpa. The old Mulberry tree was 

 blown down before my day, but the remains of a Catalpa, 

 starved and driven to a horizontal line of growth by a fine 

 old Beech, may be of their planting, for certainly no one 

 with a grain of gardening sense would have placed it so near 

 even a half-grown Beech. It is so fascinating to hunt up 

 evidence in the trees themselves of otherwise unrecorded 

 work of one's forbears that I am sorely tempted to linger 

 among these vegetable documents, but will try to confine 



