184 GARDENS PAST AND PRESENT 



The synonym for a kitchen garden in olden 

 days was the herb garden ; but this passed away, 

 and left behind it the more prosaic name for future 

 generations to use. True, man is by nature a 

 1 * cooking animal," and much addicted to gastro- 

 nomy, and there is no occasion to be ultra " nice " 

 in our modes of speech, which is very mistaken 

 refinement; but for all that there is a ring about 

 the name as of that which is common and to be 

 put out of sight, which ought not to be. For 

 while the kitchen garden is, materially, of greater 

 moment, if possible, to our physical well-being 

 than the flower garden, it lacks nothing in essence 

 of the same spiritual beauty. 



A well-ordered kitchen garden is, in truth, one 

 of the great luxuries of life. Happily it is one 

 of those luxuries which may be shared, in some 

 measure, by rich and poor alike. For the author 

 of the " Garden of Epicurus " was right when he 

 wrote, " All things out of a garden either of salads 

 or fruits, a poor man will eat better, that has one 

 of his own, than a rich man that has none." But 

 I would fain add that the luxury is one not of 

 eating merely, important as that may be and is, 

 but also of the seeing eye. One can scarcely pass 

 through a kitchen garden in full production without 

 a sense of content and satisfaction in the beautiful 

 vegetable forms to be seen in every direction, quite 

 apart from any prospect of culinary usefulness. I 

 do not now speak of the magnificent frosted silver 

 leafage of globe artichoke, or the green plumes of 

 asparagus, of the rosy down of ripening peach or 

 bloom of purple plum, which appeal to most of 



