GARDEN NOTES IN 1921 



that the besetting sin of writers on horticulture 

 and religion is cant. Writers on aesthetic garden- 

 ing should go down on their knees every morning 

 and beseech the Lord Almighty to save them from 

 cant. I will giye you an example of one form of 

 horticultural cant which infects almost every 

 writer on aesthetic gardening — the universal 

 praise of cottage gardens qua cottage gardens. A 

 garden has only to be round a cottage and you may 

 bring your colors into any sort of atrocious com- 

 bination you choose and the result will be charm- 

 ing, exquisite, something beyond the High Hall 

 gardener's with all his resources. I love a nice 

 cottage garden myself, if it happens to be neat 

 and unpretentious and if the jflowers and vege- 

 tables in it look happy — but I have never yet 

 seen the cottage garden which, if I came to pos- 

 sess it, I should not have remade within three 

 months." 



May 28, 1921. 

 In our apple-orchard is a picture of white flow- 

 ers which furnishes one of the nicest examples 

 possible of succession of bloom for late May and 

 early June. It centres upon an old gray boulder, 

 a rock which is our solitary possession in such 

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