CHAPTER I 



THE PLEASURES OF GARDENING 



11 It is a pleasant employment and profitable to one's pocket, 

 and such an exercise of the body as fits a man for every- 

 day duty which a free citizen may be called upon to 

 perform , ' ' Xenophon . 



I' God Almighty first planted a garden : and indeed, it is the 

 purest of human pleasures," Francis Bacon. 



THE love of flowers is instinct In mankind. It makes 

 itself apparent in the earliest days of childhood, when the 

 height of ambition is reached if one may become the sole 

 possessor, the guardian and the tiller, of even the smallest plot of 

 ground. It is, likely enough, a very modest piece of Mother 

 Earth, chosen because it is situated in an out-of-the-way corner, 

 and possibly because it is out of sight. But it is your undisputed 

 property, and you are left to follow your own devices ; to dig, 

 to sow, to tend and to gather the produce if there be any ! 

 how and when you yourself shall determine. The youthful 

 owner becomes, unconsciously, a philosopher. It is the sense 

 of ownership which appeals most strongly to his untutored and 

 undisciplined nature. The quest of the beautiful, the desire to 

 excel in the art of gardening, the determination to induce the 

 soil to yield its richest treasures at his behest are a later de- 

 velopment of his maturer years. But the consciousness of 

 ownership and the desire for possession are among the earliest 

 characteristics of childhood, and so sure a foothold do they obtain 

 that the onward march of after years neither obliterates nor 

 eradicates them. 



If, therefore, I place first among the pleasures of gardening the 

 gratification of this instinct for ownership, I shall do no violence, 



