48 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN 



collect them. Until lately I was absolutely ignorant of 

 their existence, and had never seen an illustrated flower 

 book of the last century. About fifteen years ago I was 

 living in London, with apparently small prospect of ever 

 living in the country again, or of ever possessing a 

 garden of my own. When ' A Year in a Lancashire 

 Garden,' by Henry A. Bright, was published in 1879, the 

 book charmed me, and I thought it simple, unaffected, 

 and original. I had not then seen Dr. Forbes Watson's 

 delightful little book, ' Flowers and Gardens,' alluded to 

 by Henry Bright. ' A Year in a Lancashire Garden ' has 

 been much imitated, but, to my mind, none of the 

 imitations possess the charm of the original. It is a 

 fascinating chat about a garden to read in a town and 

 dream over as I did. It revived in me, almost to 

 longing, the old wish to have a garden, and I resolved, 

 if it were ever realised, that every plant named by 

 Henry Bright I would get and try to grow. This I 

 literally carried out when I came to live in Surrey. His 

 joys have been my joys, and his failures have some- 

 times been mine too. In the ' Lancashire Garden ' I 

 was delighted to find a sentence which exactly expresses 

 an opinion I had long held, but never met with in words 

 before. As I agree with it even more strongly now than 

 I did then, it is well I should quote it here, for the evil it 

 denounces exists still, not only in England, but even 

 more in several countries I have visited abroad : ' For 

 the ordinary bedding-out of ordinary gardens I have a 

 real contempt. It is at once gaudy and monotonous. 

 A garden is left bare for eight months in the year, that 

 for the four hottest months there shall be a blaze of the 

 hottest colours. The same combination of the same 

 flowers appear wherever you go Calceolarias, Verbenas, 

 and Zonal Pelargoniums, with a border of Pyrethrums 

 or Cerastiums; and that is about all. There is no 



