io MY GARDEN 



But here I am telling you how to make a garden ; 

 which is absurd. There are exactly seven hundred 

 and thirty-four authorities on garden-making, and I 

 am not one of them. You shall, however, if you 

 please, come into my garden and patrol it in an 

 amiable and amateur spirit. We will be technical 

 or trivial, serious or gay, placid or agitated, as the 

 circumstances may warrant. The itinerary is only 

 too brief. First may be taken a general glance round 

 at the things done ; then the garden-room and the 

 climbing plants upon it call us. We will proceed to 

 the lofty subject of flowering shrubs, and the treasures 

 of Japan and China in this sort. We may next visit 

 the rock-border, where I have planted a thousand and 

 odd things with my own hand from a white-flowered 

 cistus that I gathered as a seedling in the myrtle- 

 scented pinewoods of Hyeres, to a tiny squill, plucked 

 out of scorched earth on the heights of Bouzareah, 

 above Algiers. In this section I propose to discuss 

 slugs and their bearing upon the rarer alpines. I 

 shall also detail my experiments with Cape bulbs in 

 the open air, and record the weather they make of it 

 during our English winters. I may then, with your 

 leave, flit off to a few favourite families, including the 

 iris and the lily. Of all flowers, the iris is first in my 

 esteem, and she shall have a chapter perhaps two 

 to herself. 



There remains my bog basin. Many people 

 would call it a bog garden. But that would not 

 be true. It is merely a basin. My pond is associated 

 with this spot, and among the plants it contains 



