My Garden in Spring 



such a way that they do not succeed, and yet retain their 

 own spontaneous happiness ; then they will ere long begin 

 to learn that right letting alone and right meddling are 

 the beginning and the ending of good gardening, and that 

 the simplest effects are just precisely those which defy 

 money and ambition and effort, and everything but tireless 

 patience, attention, and knowledge bought at first hand 

 with pain. 



Come straight from the high hills into this garden of 

 Mr. Bowles, and it is not by any difference in the look 

 of the ground or its plants that you will know you are 

 not still there : here are no precious plants pining for 

 company in a grim and tidy isolation ; here are no vener- 

 able ancient persons perpetually picking weeds until all 

 the soil between every plant is bald as a billiard ball. 

 But here only the noxious is removed, the plants are 

 given free scope for enjoying themselves in the company 

 they love, and rare difficult treasures are jostled into health 

 and happiness again by the rough-and-tumble of life as 

 they lived it on the hills ; and the earth is clothed in a 

 thousand new promises, each one of which may in time 

 reveal some treasure in the way of Crocus or Pink or 

 Pansy, until here, more than ever, does one realise the 

 devilish damage done by weeding in the ordinary garden 

 where, in fact, there should be a local black-list Cress 

 and Groundsel, and so forth (though Mr. Bowles would 

 even leave the Groundsel on the chance of its one day 

 producing ray-florets or a striped leaf) while all other 

 offers of the gods are left to flower and show what gift 

 indeed it was they were suggesting. There is one special 



