Leaves from a Madeira Garden 



beans, and new potatoes which are our cus- 

 tomary table vegetables. 



There are, it may be held, two schools of 

 gardeners. One is mainly concerned with the 

 iiarden as a whole, with the creation and main- 

 tenance of a pleasance in which trees and shrubs 

 and flowering plants play their subordinate 

 parts in a scheme of decoration. The other 

 school busies itself with the nurture of special 

 plants — with roses, carnations, begonias, or 

 what not. 1 have somewhere read a comparison 

 of flowers in this connection with pictures — ■ 

 with pictures viewed as a decorative adjunct, or 

 displayed as in a gallery for their own sakes. 

 The two attributes may be united in one 

 person ; usually, at any rate, one or the other 

 predominates. To me the cult of the general, 

 of the garden scheme as a whole, appeals more 

 strongly ; yet in the joy I feel at the unhoped- 

 for survival of a gentian, or the luxuriance of 

 an adiantum^ I own some deference to the 

 particular. 



The town of Funchal, as I have already 

 suggested, lies in the curve of the bay, and 

 straggles upwards from its centre to the sur- 



rounding hills. 



26 



