158 A GARDEN DIARY 



we can, sparaxis, ixias, bobartias, the early white 

 gladioli, and others, are all ready to hand, 

 followed by the various lesser irises, winding up, 

 at perhaps their best point, with xiphium and 

 xiphioides. 



The one indispensable point here again dog- 

 matism appears ! is that such gardens should be 

 so close to the house as to keep up the idea of 

 being merely an adjunct, or flowery courtyard to 

 it With this idea in our minds anything like 

 distance is fatal. You must be free to step into 

 your garden from your door, or with no more 

 interval than two or three steps, or the breadth 

 of a gravel walk. Garden fanatics as many of 

 us already are, and as life increases in strenu- 

 ousness more and more will yearly become, it 

 is our interest obviously to spin out our play- 

 time all we can. Now nothing so helps us 

 towards this, or so effectually counteracts our 

 Arch-enemy, as to have some little settled place 

 so cunningly contrived that even his malignity, 

 backed by its worst agents sleet, hail, fierce 

 winds, cutting rains, fails to reduce it to a 

 condition of mere despairing sloppiness ; mere 

 forlorn, and death-suggesting desolation. 



