The Happy Garden 



in the garden as the gardener and boy could 

 manage without working twenty-five hours a day 

 during the summer. Therefore, the cleared space 

 should not again be sown with grass. It could not 

 be left in its sandy nakedness, and inspiration 

 supplied peat. . . . All through the miles of the 

 wood there is a carpet of peat and moss and pine- 

 needles two or three inches thick. Nothing was 

 simpler than to roll up as much as was required, 

 and lay it down again where the old useless lawn 

 had been. 



The pine trees could have no cause of complaint 

 because they have very little else to do, when they 

 are not singing and shying cones at the squirrels 

 and each other, save to weave this self-same carpet. 

 Like Clotho, or Lachesis, or Atropos — I can never 

 remember which — they never cease weaving. 



So then, the floor was clothed in a fashion 

 surely delectable to the lilies and the heaths and 

 the azaleas, who later on should take up their 

 dwelling there. The ground was not level. It was 

 banked on either side, and terraced where the 

 grassy bank below the shrubbery used to be. 



Having two levels there must be steps : and 

 these were built of bricks left over from the court- 

 yards. 



On either side shrubs were planted : rhododen- 

 144 



