CHAPTER XV 

 RAILWAY GARDENS 



THERE are two sorts of railway gardens. There 

 is the railway-station garden, with which we are 

 all so familiar, the long strips running parallel 

 to the platforms, often wonderfully bright with 

 flowers, and showing very good specimens of 

 gardening under difficulties. For it is a very 

 difficult thing to manage a garden often more 

 than a hundred yards long, and perhaps not a 

 yard in width, with a soil that in many cases is 

 little more than rubbish shot there when the 

 railway was being made, and always liable to 

 ill-treatment and thefts from trippers and other 

 thoughtless travellers. Yet in spite of difficulties 

 there is scarcely a country station that does not 

 show a pleasant and often quite a wonderful show 

 of flowers, and wherever the stationmaster shows 

 himself anxious to make his station smart and 

 beautiful with flowers, he is sure to meet with 

 ready help from the great gardens at the hall or 

 the smaller gardens of the parsonage and other 

 neighbours. There is another person besides the 

 stationmaster who is gradually taking possession 

 of rail way -station gardens. Little by little 

 nurserymen are finding out that it is a good 

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