OUR SENTIMENTAL 

 GARDEN 



T is easier to begin with our beasts. 

 First, they are much the most im- 

 portant, and secondly, there are 

 only six of them. Our bulbs lie 

 in their thousands with just a 

 green nose showing here and there 

 now in January and are nameless 

 things: only collectively dear, if 

 extraordinarily so. 



It will instantly be perceived what kind of gardeners we are, 

 and what kind of garden we keep. We have scarcely a 

 single plant of " individuality/' We do not spend ten 

 guineas on a jonquil bulb, nor fifteen on a peony. To our 

 mind no flower can be common : therefore we lavish our 

 resources on quantity. I was going to say : not quality, 

 but that is where, in our opinion, the modern kind of garden- 

 maker goes wrong. What is in a name ? Where flowers 

 are concerned, nothing ! But how much, what treasures of 

 joy and colour, of shade and exquisite texture, of general 

 blessedness in fact, lurk in the beloved crowd of the name- 

 less things, that come to us designated only thus : " Best 

 mixed Darwin Tulips''/ "Blue bedding Hyacinths"/ 

 " Single Jonquils, best mixed/' and so on ! We once de- 

 scended so far as to order " a hundred mixed Delphiniums 

 at 10s.," and when, last June, we looked down on a certain 



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