THE WISLEY GARDEN 51 



adjunct of every great garden establishment. Mr 

 G. F. Wilson in 1900, not long before his death 

 at a good old age, told in simple words and 

 with a sly touch of covert humour of the success 

 of his first venture at Weybridge. The orchard 

 house was sixty feet long by twenty feet wide, in 

 which, as he says, "being then a hard-worked 

 man, I had to prune the trees by candle light.*' 

 The rafters had proverbs, principally Spanish ones, 

 pasted on them. An amateur asked Mr Rivers 

 how it was that his fruit was eaten by wasps, 

 while Wilson's escaped ? The answer was, " How 

 could they attack it with all those proverbs against 

 stealing overhead !" The efficiency of the proverbs 

 might have been questioned ; not so the capability 

 and zeal of the man whose perseverance and power 

 of invention overcame every difficulty. Fruit-grow- 

 ing alone did not long satisfy a mind so keen and 

 active, and the next branch of gardening to be 

 taken up was the growing of Japanese lilies, not 

 so well known then as now. The impetus in this 

 direction was given accidentally by the purchase 

 of some lots of bulbs damaged, as it was supposed, 

 by sea water, which were going a-begging at one 

 of the horticultural auction sales. The hope which 

 instigated the venture was justified in the result. 

 The lily-bulbs, planted in rough wine cases, and 

 grown in the orchard house, proved to be quite 

 undamaged, and flourished exceedingly, while one 

 or two of them turned out to be of singular value. 

 Henceforward all sorts of experiments were tried 

 in lily-growing, both under glass and in the open 

 air, and were so successful that his untiring efforts 



