The Happy Garden 



anything that comes to hand, natural or faked. 

 The chief thing is to have very little in it. Two 

 or three snowdrops growing by a baby fern on one 

 side, whilst a piece of a branch of a pine tree 

 covered with grey lichen may spread itself across 

 the other, with a gay toadstool — if in season — a 

 tiny imitation one, if not — completes it. But when 

 one begins to make a table garden, it is wonderful 

 what varieties of things can be found to furnish it. 



They are melancholy toys, these winter gardens, 

 but, when heavy work is toward — and the rectifi- 

 cation of the mistakes of one year before the 

 coming of the next is very heavy work — it is well 

 to have something to play with. It is parlour 

 gardening ; much as, in the absence of war, soldiers 

 are set down to a board with pawns to play the 

 war-game. There are people who declare that 

 gardening is not serious, but those are disappointed 

 souls who will have it that all art is " fair but 

 futile." And so, I would retort, it is for them, 

 but that I know the danger of limiting art, and 

 the arrogance that believes that only the elect may 

 enjoy and profit by it. Indeed, I cannot and dare 

 not believe that there is any creature finally and 

 hopelessly impervious to art and Nature. 



That is a confession of faith which must be 

 irritating to the utilitarian who is seeking for the 



104 



