THE KITCHEN GARDEN 



THE flower garden touches the house and belongs to 

 the house. The carpets are reproduced in its lawns 

 bordered with geranium and calceolaria,the wall-papers 

 in its tall hollyhocks and sunflowers, larkspur and 

 cenothera, poker plant and golden rod. The arboretum 

 is like a Roman triumph in which all the denizens of 

 the empire have been collected together to do honour 

 to their conqueror. If we want the true temple of 

 Flora we must enter the rose garden. Here, as in 

 other temples, only one attribute of the thing to be 

 worshipped is singled out and placed on high, but at 

 least the roses are thoroughly honoured. The ideal 

 wild garden has no borders ; if man arranges it he 

 must at any rate appear not to have done so. In the 

 kitchen garden man frankly sets nature at work for 

 his own ends. We feel when we enter it much as we 

 should if we asked the dairymaid among her milk- 

 pans to help us wile an idle hour. Idleness in the 

 flower garden has no piquancy ; while, for some 

 reason that we are too lazy to pursue further, the 

 kitchen garden seems crammed full of idleness. A 

 tall brick wall of the warmest, softest red that the 

 old brick-makers ever baked shuts out the wild 

 world. 



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