258 STUDIES IN GARDENING 



that they have studied the plant as it grew, and not 

 merely its flowers picked and arranged in a nosegay. 



The Japanese are great gardeners, but they have 

 never become florists, partly perhaps because most of 

 their flowers are indigenous, and they are used to see 

 the types of even their most elaborate garden flowers 

 growing wild; but chiefly because the very life of 

 flowers is sacred and significant to them almost as 

 human life is to us. No doubt these two reasons are 

 connected with each other. For we are much more 

 ready to play tricks with exotic than with native 

 flowers; we take much more pleasure in the whole 

 life and growth of a Primrose or of a Bluebell than 

 in the life and growth of a Dahlia or of Lilium Aura- 

 turn. The Japanese have a great advantage over us 

 in the splendour and variety of their native flora. 

 Flowers must make a great appeal to the imagination 

 of any one where Lilium Auratum is to be found grow- 

 ing wild; and there must be little temptation there 

 to make a sharp division between wild and garden 

 flowers or to treat garden flowers as utterly artificial 

 things. It may well be that the splendour of the native 

 flora has had a most powerful influence upon Japanese 

 art, and even that it has made the Japanese an artistic 

 people. However that may be, there can be no doubt 

 of the great part which flowers play both in their 

 life and in their art. And their flowers are so closely 

 connected with their art that even for us they are 

 most strongly associated with it. Every one will 

 have noticed how many Japanese flowers seem to 



