CHAPTER XIV 



MODERN GARDENING 



• " There is a garden, and a wilderness, 



. And both are fair, 



Yet touch not nature's own true loveHness, 

 With useless care. 



" But in your garden, work till stars appear. 

 With toil and skill, 

 Through dawning life, until the fading year. 

 When all is still. 



" Nature is mystic, like a hidden soul, 

 Complete, sublime. 

 Changing, returning, yet a perfect whole, 

 For endless time. 



" But conquer from the wild each flower that grows. 

 In case some day. 

 The Maker passing, stoops to pluck a rose 

 Upon His way." 



Sybil Amherst. 



FEW periods have witnessed a greater advance in gardening 

 than the first decade of the twentieth century. Ten 

 years before the close of the nineteenth gardening was still 

 the passion of the few ; now it is the craze of the many. For 

 every book on the subject that came out in 1895, a dozen 

 appeared in 1905; for each person who then knew to what order 

 a daisy belonged, perhaps twenty could now be found, able to 

 quote with ease five-syllabled Latin names. This enthusiasm 

 seems to be more than a passing fashion, and has penetrated 

 various ranks of society, and the impress it has already made 

 upon gardens is sufficiently marked to be lasting. Perhaps 

 no better indication of the increase of those who appreciate 

 beautiful gardens could be found than a comparison of the 

 numbers of visitors to Kew. For some time after they were 



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