Gardener's Pride 



some of your pet schemes may be saved from 

 devastation. 



But the situation is impossible. Half a garden 

 is almost worse than none. Really, to create a 

 garden, it is necessary to fling away ambition, 

 social pleasures, to reduce natural responsibilities 

 to a minimum, and, if you are a man, to retire on 

 a certain income. If you are a woman, then marry 

 an artist, an author, or a clergyman, and make it 

 clear to him that your garden is to be the central 

 idea of both your lives, stipulate for an adequate 

 allowance to meet the temptations of the autumn 

 catalogues, select your friends, discard your ac- 

 quaintances, and set to work. 



Such a programme sounds monstrously selfish, 

 but, indeed, gardening is a very serious business, 

 as serious as literature, or stocks and shares, and 

 much more serious than most of the professions ; 

 and it has the blessing that there is no money to be 

 made out of it. In other arts there is the dreadful 

 necessity of pleasing the publisher, or the picture - 

 dealer, and as many of the public as can be wheedled 

 into interest ; between works, imagination and 

 energy are exhausted in haggling. The gardener 

 has none to please but him- or herself, and he 

 (or she) is never wholly pleased, for the garden will 

 never be perfect, it will never be finished. As the 



5 



