OUR SENTIMENTAL GARDEN 

 entrance passage filled her with disdain. Though she 

 grudgingly admitted a possibility in the drawing- room, it 

 was not until we emerged upon the terrace that her pre- 

 ventions vanished.-That rise and fall of moorland in such 

 startling proximity, and the way in which the house and its 

 terraces seemed to cling to the hillside and be perched in 

 space between the giant curves and the dip of the valley 

 beyond, fairly took her breath away. An artist friend de- 

 scribed the first impression of the view in these words : " It is 

 so sudden! " For a long time, even after the queer, fascinating 

 spot had become our own, this wonder of " suddenness " 

 always seized us. 



It still seems incomprehensible to us that anyone could 

 have desired to dispossess himself of so attractive a place 

 an Italian " Villino " on the Surrey Highlands is not to 

 be found every day. 



But, after all, it only became a Villino after our ownership. 

 It was just a small white house on the hillside before that. 

 Heather and Gorse, Bramble and Bracken pressed hard upon 

 the small area of the property which was at all cultivated, 

 between densely growing clumps of pine and holly. 

 The courtyard is no longer dank : it is widened, levelled, 

 and walled in against its high fir-grown strip of bank. It 

 is guarded by bright green wooden gates, and three sentinel 

 Cypresses that begin to mark the Italian note. 

 As for the lower reach the Reserve Garden now which 

 in former days was a dumping-ground for horrors of broken 

 glass, potsherds and tin cans <a dreary patch of weeds 

 and couch grass withal), it is unrecognizable. Especially 

 this year, when, to the herbaceous border, to the espaliered 

 apple-trees, and to the neat little turfed walks, we have 

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