32 A GARDEN DIARY 



remained how were the flower-beds to get them- 

 selves filled ? Only one answer to that question 

 has ever presented itself to the professional 

 gardening mind, and that is " Send to the nur- 

 seryman." 



Now that nurseryman may or may not be an 

 excellent one. Ours, as it happens, may fairly I 

 think be called so. Good or bad he is never 

 a functionary to be approached without defer- 

 ence, at least by those in whose eyes Thrift 

 stands for something in the battle of life. " But 

 common plants are so cheap " one is often told. 

 Very likely, they may be ; indeed, judging by their 

 catalogues, nurserymen stand habitually aston- 

 ished before the spectacle of their own moderation. 

 An average herbaceous plant a lupin, or a lark- 

 spur, let us say costs as a rule about ninepence. 

 It may sink as low as sixpence, or it may rise as 

 high as a shilling. Anybody, it will be argued, 

 can afford sixpence ; some people have been 

 known to spend a whole shilling without wincing. 

 A very short walk along any ordinary garden 

 border, calculating as one goes the number of 

 sixpennyworths it would take to fill it, will be 

 found an excellent corrective for such light- 

 heartedness. I made such a calculation myself 

 only the other day, and the result was an 

 eminently sobering one. 



Seeds on the other hand are honestly cheap. 

 There are expensive seedsmen, but generally 



