In My Vicarage Garden 



dislike to all that is ugly, it seizes on each vacant 

 piece of ground, brings to it from every quarter 

 seeds and even roots, and in a very short time 

 clothes it with beauty that, being undisturbed, will 

 be the inheritance of the railway as long as the 

 railway itself lasts, and will make our railways as 

 happy hunting-grounds for the botanist as they 

 have been for the geologist. 1 



1 A writer in The Globe (in 1898) confirms this. He says, "A 

 Londoner would have to walk many miles before he encountered 

 such an assortment of wild plants as that which he can inspect 

 along the railway banks, for example, between Gloucester Road 

 and Earl's Court Station. ... A wealth of plants which are 

 associated with hedgerows along country roads is to be found which 

 somehow or other have fought their way into the wilderness of 

 bricks and mortar." 



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