APRIL 



277 



to the public cheaper than ever. There is a new penny 

 handbook on gardening to be got at any railway station 

 (Ward, Lock & Co.). It is quite good, giving all the 

 elementary instruction necessary. 



The uses of petroleum tubs in a garden are endless. 

 I get my oil now from London, and so do not return the 

 barrels. Mr. Barr told me the other day he was knock- 

 ing the bottoms out of some, sinking them one below the 

 other with a pipe in between, and puddling them with 

 stiff clay at the bottom ; then he was going to plant them 

 with specimens of the beautiful new French Nymphaeas 

 (Water Lilies), M. Marliac's hybrids being the most 

 beautiful perhaps of all. A full, excellent, and detailed 

 account of the cultivation of these Water Lilies is to be 

 found in Mr. Eobinson's last edition of ' The English 

 Flower Garden.' As is natural at my age, I have a most 

 elderly affection for types and parent plants, because as 

 a rule they are less expensive to buy, and much more 

 willing to be managed when one has got them. But I do 

 not say this without from my heart giving all honour to 

 cultivators of hybrid plants. 



Tub arrangements can be made of endless use even in 

 the smallest gardens and back-yards, if sunny never 

 forgetting the precious rain-water, which every slight slope 

 in the ground makes it easy to collect if the tubs are 

 sunk level with the ground. I mention things again and 

 again, knowing well in our full modern lives how useful 

 it is merely to remind. This year I have sunk a tub 

 under every tap I have in the garden, as exposing the 

 water to the sun and air prevents its being so hard and 

 cold as when it comes straight out of the pipe. 



We have just had, what we always feel to be doubly 

 precious in our sandy soil, a good shower of rain. Mr. 

 Stephen Phillips, in the ' Saturday Review ' last year, had 



