CHAPTER II 



GENERAL SURVEY 



MY garden was once a field, and there are people 

 still in middle age who remember the scene in those 

 days. Sometimes, from their tone, I suspect they 

 preferred it so. The place slopes south and spreads 

 along a front of sixty yards or more. When I came 

 here the slope was all grass, and supported a single 

 damson tree and one small evergreen oak. At the 

 bottom of this slope a wall arose and hid the kitchen 

 garden. Along the barrier, in a dense mass, there 

 rioted aucubas, laurels, and other mean evergreen 

 things. A fine robinia pseudacacia looked down 

 contemptuously upon this trash. Since then the 

 aucubas have begun to vanish, though a few still 

 linger there. Each autumn some more go ; and the 

 laurels also disappear. Their places are taken by 

 prunus Pissardii, cerasus Padus ; by buddleia globosa, 

 clumps of phormium, spiraea Lindleyana, a lime tree, 

 a poplar, a shumach and a purple filbert. I have also 

 set out staphylea colchica, liriodendron, calycanthus 

 the allspice, and a few good thorns and brambles. 

 These things, though not of note, are worthier than 

 those that went before them ; and I hope that many 

 may in their turn give place to their betters. 



