220 GARDENS PAST AND PRESENT 



dress it and to keep it. Is it not the God-given 

 ideal ? and believe it or not as we may, the home 

 in the garden remains for all time and for all 

 humanity, whether taken in its largest or most 

 limited sense, the truest and best realisation of 

 earthly happiness. Light and air, sunshine and 

 shade, trees and flowers and the fruits of the earth, 

 are the heritage of every human being every-day 

 blessings which, to their own undoing, many, alas, 

 cannot enjoy, and some seem scarcely to value. 



Neither is it enough to hold these blessings in 

 common. The plot must be our own, to have and 

 to hold, if only for the time being, where sun- 

 shine or shower may shine or fall on us and ours, 

 where stands the tree under whose shade our chil- 

 dren have a right to play, where grow the flowers 

 and the fruit tended by our own hands or under 

 our own supervision the home in the garden for 

 workers and breadwinners to return to when the 

 day's work is done, the home in the garden for 

 the home-stayers to take pride in and to keep, for 

 all to love and cherish and to enjoy. No more 

 precious gift can fairy godmother lay in the cradle 

 of earth-born child in castle or cottage than the 

 spell of the garden to rest upon heart and hands ! 



Let us rest here in these gathered up thoughts, 

 which at best are but suggestions, with one final 

 aspect of the garden that we love. 



In springtide or at the zenith of midsummer 

 glory, in the aftermath of autumn or in winter's 

 rest, as long as life shall last and human senses 

 remain unimpaired, it never loses its interest. One 



