A GARDEN DIARY 85 



imagination defective, but that over and above 

 all this we have in most cases not the faintest 

 idea of what we are aiming at. With no 

 clear vision of what we propose ultimately to 

 produce, how in the name of reason can we 

 hope to produce it, or anything else worth 

 having ? 



The cause of the mischance in nine cases 

 out of ten lies in the fact that we attempt too 

 much. Our original combination may have been 

 good, but we want to make it still better. Our 

 gold gets overgilt ; our lilies are painted till 

 they almost cease to be lilies at all, and the 

 result is failure all along the line. This sounds 

 the reverse of encouraging, but I am not sure 

 but what it is in some respects better that it 

 should be so. I suspect that all gardeners 

 professionals and amateurs, experts and gropers, 

 are just now rather in a state of flux and 

 indecision. Two chief schools hold the field, 

 and are in some respects mutually destructive 

 of one another. There is the school which 

 avows itself the faithful, not to say the servile, 

 follower and imitator of Nature, and there is 

 the school that proposes to itself to improve upon 

 her. The tendency of the first is to develop a 

 good deal of picturesque disorder, a pleasant, ' 

 rather easy-going sense of repose, and possibly 

 some want of definite form and colour. The 

 tendency of the second, or rather of its members, 



