42 



THE NATURE BOOK 



the friends whom he compliments so 

 gracefully, is," wrote the late Sir Leslie 

 Stephen, " perhaps the pleasantest in 

 his historx." Can we, then, be too grateful 

 to gardens and gardening that brought 

 joy into the crooked life of one so great 

 as Alexander Pope ? 



landmark on the path of life, where 

 every flower is hallowed by associations 

 that seem to stand out in greater re- 

 lief, clearer and more precious, as hours 

 are lost in days, and weeks pass swiftly 

 into years. 



The only other garden that can com- 



A COUNTRY HOUSE GARDEN: " WIGGANTHORPE," YORKS. 



After all, a garden fails in its purpose 

 unless within its friendly shade we find 

 an abiding sense of exquisite peace, a 

 solace that soothes, a balm for worldly 

 care. And where can these be found in 

 greater degree than in a garden, providing 

 it is a garden that one loves ? To know 

 the real charm of a garden one must 

 have grown up with it or have made 

 it. A garden around which are entwined 

 the thoughts of childhood and early 

 youth — seeming to us, over the bridge 

 of years, to be the happiest time of life, 

 a time when the world of actuality was 

 enveloj^ed in a golden halo of eager 

 anticipation — this is, perhaps, the most 

 perfect garden one could wish to have. 

 Pjut how very few of us can hope to 

 live and die in that old-world garden, 

 where every bush and every tree is a 



pare in any way with this is the garden 

 made with one's own hands, and tended 

 with fostering care, in which one may 

 bring again to life the dreams of ^-outh, 

 and re-people with memory-faces the 

 dimmed and distant past. 



The making of a garden in which the 

 spirit of peace may find a rest, implies, 

 at first, much care and self-denial. It 

 implies much tender nurturing of fragile 

 slips, of wayward seeds, of gentle re- 

 proving of overbearing plants that would 

 usurp the ground that is not theirs by 

 right. There is no delight in gardening 

 comparable to that found in plants 

 that one has gi-own, tended from baby- 

 hood and brought healthily to prime. 

 The associations of a garden cluster round 

 the life-histories of its plants and flowers 

 — the Moss-Rose from the border of some 



