Preface 



corner of Mr. Bowles's garden of which I know that he 

 will not choose adequately to talk, but of which I, there- 

 fore, must, seeing that it has long appeared to me quite 

 the finest piece of real gardening that I know. It is a 

 roughly triangular piece of ground, and is filled with the 

 Dwarf Almond, a blaze of pink and white in spring. But 

 in spring, too, all its ground is surfaced and crammed and 

 overflowing with rare Crocus and Primrose and Bland 

 Anemone, and every vernal bulb that is usually looked 

 after and cleansed and cossetted, but here left alone to 

 make itself a wild plant and seed and establish in perfect 

 naturalness under the eye of the gardener who knows and 

 loves each one as a shepherd knows his lambs. So much 

 for early spring ; and then, barrenness ? Or else digging 

 and fussing and planting ? Not a spade touches that holy 

 ground, any more than iron had been laid to the un- 

 harvested meadow of Hippolytus, but as the Anemones 

 and the Crocus fade, up spring Daffodils and rare Tulips 

 and difficult Fritillaries that are everybody else's despair 

 and have to be treated as annuals, but here look as if they 

 had just been poked in casually and forgotten by our late 

 sovereign lady Queen Elizabeth, so that the whole patch, 

 under the light trellis of the Almonds growing green, 

 becomes anew, or continues, a dancing sea of light and 

 colour. 



And so the tale goes on, and the glories of spring 

 give way to those of summer, till the sea turns blue 

 with Campanulas, and the copse, for so it now has grown, 

 is floating in blue peat-reek of Campanula patula, while 

 high overhead tower the stately heads of C. lactiflora, 

 xiii 



