224 MY GARDEN 



These old gardens haunt one's memory as having pos- 

 sessed "atmosphere" and a wealth of interest not al- 

 ways present in modern gardens, augmented, as they 

 are, with rarer flowers and all the modern inventions of 

 the gardener's art. 



Many a garden would be redeemed from the common- 

 place by the presence of a few graceful trees. They 

 would relieve the tiresome flatness of its surface and lend 

 the agreeable variety of light and shade which gives 

 depth and meaning to its brilliance and subtlety to its 

 beauty, without which no composition is wholly satis- 

 fying. A garden should hold out a perpetual invitation, 

 but this the merely sunny garden never does during the 

 heat of summer days, whereas, that with comfortable 

 seats in shady corners ever tempts us to linger. It has 

 the pleasant livable quality which is as desirable in a 

 garden as in a room. 



I do not speak for great Elms, Maples, and Oaks within 

 the garden enclosure. They, indeed, would rob the soil, 

 and cast a far too heavy shade. But there are beautiful 

 flowering trees, picturesque in outline and so lightly 

 made as to cast only such shadow as many a plant is 

 grateful to receive. They rob the border to no greater 

 extent than we can easily repair by the addition of a 

 little extra fertilizer. 



In spring these flowering trees are particularly valu- 

 able in the garden, because the great array of flowering 

 bulbs and other early spring flowers are so low growing 



