104 THE SCHOOL GARDEN BOOK 



it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over 

 my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or 

 conceive of who had never taken part in the process of 

 creation." 



To the real gardener the chief delight comes from watching 

 things grow rather than from the results. Like the tourist 

 in Stevenson's song, it is the journey and not the end of the 

 journey that is worth the while. If one is looking always for 

 a certain result one might use the artificial paper flowers and 

 palms and ferns, which require no care whatever, but which 

 are, of all the false things in the world, perhaps the most in- 

 tolerable. 



"The natural course," wrote Forbes Watson many years 

 ago in his classic book on "Flowers and Gardens/' "is for 

 people to delight in loving and cherishing plants from earliest 

 youth and to trace their slow progress into age. Nothing 

 can be more pleasurable than this. At the beginning of the 

 season we see the green tips of the snowdrop and crocuses, 

 then those of the daffodils appear, then some fine morning 

 unexpectedly as we enter the garden a golden aconite has 

 lifted its face from a cluster of buds, still downward, and 

 given us cheerful greeting; coming, perhaps, just where we 

 had least expected it, from some bed where we had forgotten 

 that it grew." 



For starting the seeds of the foliage plants one may use the 

 ordinary window-boxes, and very often one can utilize a 

 part of a box in which other things are growing. Perhaps 

 no plant is better worth trying than the beautiful fine-leaved 

 asparagus, called by the rather formidable name Asparagus 

 plumosus nanus. This is one of the most beautiful of all 

 foliage plants as well as one of the easiest to grow. It starts 



