8 MARCH 



tended borders above and beds below ; not the rose 

 plot with its several hundred bushes half hidden in 

 the spring by a blaze of flowering bulbs. My 

 favourite resort is the wild garden of the orchard, 

 which, even in late summer, when its grass grows 

 brown and brittle in the wind, gives me a fuller 

 conviction of what true gardening should be than 

 do the tidy rose-beds and the carefully tended 

 borders beside the smooth lawn. 



But if one cannot have the garden that experience 

 has taueht is the best and the most beautiful if life's 



o 



opportunities can never repeat themselves one may, 

 at any rate, make the best of the garden as it exists 

 after several years of loving tendance have brought 

 a certain amount of result in return for the trouble 

 spent upon it. As a garden it may only be a poor, 

 small thing, but at least it is my own, and cramped 

 and stupid as it may appear to the casual observer, 

 it yields as many flowers as any other of double its 

 size with which I am acquainted. 



But the struggle for results has been a hard one. 

 When I first took to gardening I began with the 

 very simple plan of growing everything I could get. 

 Nothing came amiss with me, whether from the 

 auction room, or the retail salesman, or the gardens 

 and greenhouses of my friends. It seems to me in 

 retrospect that one day I said, " Go to; I will make 

 a garden." And forthwith I bought largely of what 

 sellers had to offer, supplemented by what friends 

 had to give, and then sat down to enjoy the results 

 of my labour. These were unforeseen and peculiar. 

 I had scorned the idea of growing snapdragons, 

 and larkspurs, and Canterbury bells, and suchlike 



