208 MORE POT-POURRI 



greater merit for domestic purposes, and for the same 

 reason they are well adapted for travelling. 



February %3rd. A treat has come for all of us 

 amateur gardeners this month in the publication of a 

 long looked -for gardening book by Miss Jekyll, charmingly 

 illustrated from photographs of her own. But, good as are 

 these reproductions, in my opinion they can never compare 

 with woodcuts or steel engravings, and they give but a faint 

 idea of the unusual charm and beauty of her self-created 

 garden. Her book is most truly called 'Wood and 

 Garden,' and is a never-ending lesson of how to lay out 

 a piece of ground by using its natural advantages instead 

 of hopelessly destroying them by clearing the ground to 

 make a garden. In this case there can be no imitation, 

 as, without the copse-covered piece of ground which she 

 selected, no one could produce the same sort of garden. 

 Nature must have had her way first. But the charm of 

 the combination of Nature and Art as carried out by Miss 

 Jekyll is very great. We always open these books at the 

 month we are in, and she says : ' There is always in 

 February some one day at least when one smells the yet 

 distant, coming summer/ Such a day has been ours 

 to-day, and I enjoyed it doubly in consequence of having 

 so lately returned from London. And the forwardness of 

 the spring it really is more forward even than last year 

 makes one enjoy it more. Though everything is growing 

 so fast, it is quite agitating for the gardener, giving the 

 feeling that all the work is behindhand. I am told that 

 in my first book many thought I recommended that 

 things should be done too soon ; but in my experience 

 human nature rather tends to reversing the proverb, and 

 acts on the principle of ' Never do to-day what can be 

 done to-morrow.' And in all things about a garden, 

 except when Jack Frost is to be feared, it is best to be 

 early rather than late. 



