APRIL 53 



no value. Other good flowering shrubs for April are 

 the Malus jloribunda, quite magnificent in bud; the 

 Exochordas, very pretty in bud ; several of the Genistas, 

 especially G. precox, and the double-flowering gorse ; 

 and even the shrubs which flower later are very 

 attractive in April from their young foliage. 



I am sorry to say that the April record of the garden 

 would be very incomplete without some mention of the 

 weeds ; for it is in April they first show themselves, 

 and some of them only in April. In new gardens it 

 is possible, and not very difficult, to keep the weeds 

 under ; but in old gardens it is almost impossible. It 

 is an old and very true gardening proverb, that one 

 year's seed is many years' weed ; or as Hamlet laments, 

 * An unweeded garden grows to seed,' and so ' things 

 rank and gross in nature possess it merely.' In the 

 history of an old garden there must have often been a 

 one year's seed ; and there must be in it from ame to 

 time many an unweeded corner. But I have almost 

 an affection for weeds, a decided afiection for some of 

 them, and I have not much sympathy with those who 

 say that a garden is not worth looking at unless it is as 

 clean as a newly-swept floor ; it is a counsel of perfec- 

 tion, which I have no great wish to reach. A weed is 

 but a good plant in the wrong place ; I say a good 

 plant advisedly, having a full faith that where nature 



