" PARADISO " 231 



stitutes real art in a garden, where the natural, 

 unrestrained freedom of plants should always be 

 a first consideration. If they require, for the 

 sake of orderliness and restraint, to be staked or 

 tied, it has to be so carefully and skilfully done 

 that the observer is unconscious of it. One of 

 the greatest difficulties in teaching about garden 

 upkeep and routine work is to impress upon young 

 gardeners the fact that although weeds have to 

 be banished, dying leaves swept away, and over- 

 arching honeysuckle or roses have to be tied in 

 cases where they block an entrance, yet plants 

 are like children and only flourish and remain 

 happy if a considerable degree of liberty is en- 

 couraged. There should be no tightly strained 

 ties of raffia or tarred twine, no hard, forced lines 

 by which creepers are controlled, all should be 

 Nature at her best, brought easily and gently to 

 the immediate surroundings of a house. This to 

 my mind is the pleasure of a garden. 



Talking in this strain, teaching her young people 

 how to think for themselves, which is a lesson 

 seriously neglected in modern days, the captain 

 guides them along narrow grass-grown paths and 

 their devious course until, after forming loops 

 and half-circles, slowly ascending, they reach the 

 summit of a high mound, to which we, who know 

 similar features in Italian gardens, give the name 

 of " Paradise" It is an artificial feature, formed 

 by accumulated deposits of hard chalk excavated 

 from where the lawn-tennis ground had to be 

 levelled and carted away by lime-pit men. Gradu- 

 ally its height was still more added to by having 



