110 VARIETY IN THE LITTLE GARDEN 



plantings of the great gardener and botanist of England, Miss 

 Ellen Willmott. In this book, not only are rare flowers, shrubs, 

 and trees from the world over shown growing beautifully in 

 Essex, but such borders of roses and irises, such masses of the 

 Nankeen lily at the edge of a sunlit sweep of grass, such cascades 

 of Alpine primroses between boulders in the rock garden, such 

 a delightful garden-house with such roses clambering over it, 

 that for my part I could not possibly sit long within, but must 

 be outside to enjoy the colors and scents of these superbly grown 

 flowers. Charm unending is in this sumptuous book, as equally 

 it lies in the tiny pamphlet of the admiral; and it is the very 

 function of the garden to impart this charm to garden literature. 

 One of the more important meanings of the garden is then, 

 the fascinating quality of what is in these books about it. 



In near relation to this meaning lies another — the power of 

 the garden to stir the mind. It makes for quests. When one 

 hears of a strange new seed, plant, flower, shrub, strangely 

 beautiful, who does not snatch pencil and notebook, beg for 

 details from the speaker, turn to catalogues, to books? And when 

 a treasure arrives, to what ingenuities does one not set oneself 

 that its sowing or its setting, its care, its growth, may be of the 

 best and finest? No interest, no other legitimate curiosity sets 

 the mind in such lovely ways as does the garden interest. Here 

 we work hand in hand with science and with art, and always in 

 a pure and happy air. Let me give an instance of what I mean 

 by this stirring up of the mind. Not many weeks ago, accounts 

 began to arrive in this country of a new tulip shown at Chelsea 

 this year — a glory of a parrot tulip — pink, a sport from Clara 

 Butt, bearing the sprightly name of Fantasy. A pink parrot- 

 tulip would be truly a sensation — I thought of the pretty 

 practice of a fine amateur in Hartford, who on her shining 

 luncheon-table in spring lays a wreath of parrot tulips with their 



