Some Gardeners I Have Known 151 



has been to maintain a sort of experimental garden where I 

 might learn flowers, study them from their first seed leaves, 

 wateh their manner of growth, and rejoice in their first bloom. 

 How eagerly I have awaited this event, this manifestation of 

 the seen from the unseen, ignorant of the precise form it 

 would take. It has been as marvellous to me as if I had stood 

 at the elbow of Deity when the first forms were spoken into 

 life, and my eyes had been the first to see the results. I can- 

 not fashion a flower, but I can grow them, and thus repeat the 

 miracle of creation. So I plant my seeds, obey the laws, and 

 at my bidding a world of loveliness springs into existence. To 

 me life is life, and all life divine; and I have no more desire to 

 strip a plant ruthlessly of its beauty, than I have to pluck an 

 arm from a child, or to disfigure its face. The whole develop- 

 ment of a plant is sacred to me, and it has a right to fulfill its 

 life just as I have mine; and when this is accomplished, and 

 its bloom is passing, I remove all but one perfect seed-vessel, 

 which is carefully labeled and preserved for future use; for in 

 this way the plant is saved from a needless exhaustion of its 

 vitality. Flowers are protected in my garden, and by making 

 the conditions favorable for plant forms to grow to perfection, 

 I feel that I cooperate with the vast cosmic law, that is guiding 

 every manifestation of the Spirit through varied and progress- 

 ive material forms: in my small way, I can thus aid and fur- 

 ther the great cause of evolution of that, which is ready, at 

 this particular moment of its existence, to take the special 

 form of plant life in my garden. Does not this place in the 

 reverent gardener's hand a divine commission? This may 

 seem a fine-spun theory to the orthodox, but it gives a joyous 

 impulse to the watering-pot! 



Encyclopedias of horticulture become intensely interest- 

 ing when we grasp that they are the genealogical records and 

 biographies of various manifestations of Spirit on a lower 



