THE COTTAGE GARDEN 



The grass piece by the cottage door begins to find 

 itself cut into beds ; uncared for flowers, wild Gilly- 

 flowers, Thyme, Violets and the like, give colour to the 

 cottage garden that has only just become a garden. 

 With that comes competition : one man outdoes another, 

 begs plants and seeds of all his friends ; buds a Rose on 

 to a Briar standard, and boasts the scent of his new 

 Clove Pinks. And so it grew that times were not so 

 strenuous : Queen Victoria comes to the throne, and 

 with prosperity come the pretty frillings of life, and 

 cottage gardens ape their masters' Rose walks, and 

 collections of this and that. To-day Africa and Asia 

 nod together in a sunny cottage border, and Lettuces 

 from the Island of Cos show their green faces next to 

 Sir Walter Raleigh's great gift to the poor man, the 

 Potato. Poplars from Lombardy grow beside the 

 garden gate ; the Currant bush from Zante drips its 

 jewel-like fruit tassels under a Cherry tree given to us, 

 indirectly, by Lucullus, lost by us in our slumbering 

 Saxon times, and here again, with Henry the Eighth's 

 gardener, from Flanders. In some quite humble 

 gardens the Cretan Quince and Persian Peach grow ; 

 so that history, poetry, and romance peer over 

 Giles's rustic hedge ; and the wind blows scents of all 

 the world through the small latticed window. 



Ploughman Giles, sitting by his cottage door, smoking 

 an American weed in his pipe while his wife shells the 

 Peas of ancient Rome into a basin, does not realise 

 that his little garden, gay with Indian Pinks and African 

 Geraniums, and all its small crowd of joyous-coloured 

 flowers, is an open book of the history of his native 

 land spread at his feet. Here's the conquest of America, 

 and the discovery of the Cape, and all the gold of Greece 

 for his bees to play with. Here's his child making a 

 chain of Chaucer's Daisies ; and there's a Chinese 



57 H 



