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more than the mere growing of blossoms to please, 

 something more than the mere forming of a living 

 herbarium, something more than the mere creation 

 or collecting of "novelties" for the sole sake of 

 novelty ; there is something deeper and more diffi- 

 cult to talk about than that — something none the 

 less real because largely indefinable. As earnest, 

 thinking gardeners, our views and sentiments are 

 not limited to a mere toying with the soil and 

 with attractive vegetation. We are not children — 

 though we ought to be, and are. I mean, we do 

 not garden — we do not build Alpine rockworks 

 and plant them with gay flowers quite so irre- 

 sponsibly as children build mud-castles and stick 

 them over with coloured oddments. There is a 

 significant profundity in the meanest of our efforts — 

 even in the building of mud-castles ; and in the 

 maturer effort of gardening it is only natural that 

 this should be of richer meaning. 



Gardening is a saving grace in any nation. It 

 would be invidious to name examples ; enough 

 to say that nations with marked propensities for 

 gardening figure prominently in past and present 

 history. Such nations, though "insurgent sons," 

 are necessarily less so than they would otherwise be ; 

 for they live nearer to the truth of things, nearer 



