How to manage a Garden 



Flowers in a Vegetable Garden. 



There are some folks as well within as without the pale 

 of professional gardening who like to separate gardening 

 by nicely divided lines, and who would no more think of 

 planting flowers in a vegetable garden than of planting 

 pyramid pears on a croquet lawn. Such sharply-cut 

 divisions have no parallel in nature, and although I would 

 not advise fruit-trees to be planted in a pleasure ground, 

 it is chiefly because they would not receive such good 

 treatment as if they were in a properly formed vegetable 

 or fruit ground. To bar flowers from a vegetable garden 

 is, however, nothing more nor less than a foolish whim. It 

 remains as a sad fact which I have frequently observed, 

 that visitors, no matter of what class, are rarely shown over 

 the vegetable portion of an estate. The first visit is to 

 the glass houses, then to the flower and pleasure ground, 

 whose every walk is religiously traversed, but a mere glance 

 or bird's eye view is considered sufficient for the vegetables. 

 "Those are only vegetables. You do not want to see 

 them," says the head gardener as he sweeps his hand con- 

 temptuously towards the most necessary part of the garden. 

 Such is unfortunately the case, but we all know that a 

 familiarity with the growth of vegetables would make 

 happier the lives of thousands. Are we to educate them 

 by means similar to those quoted above ? Now I contend 

 that the very fact that a person is brought through the 

 vegetable ground to see the flowers may also cause him 

 to observe, question, and perchance eventually practise 

 some of the kitchen garden operations. Now the most 

 suitable places in the garden for flowers are in the borders 

 36 



