THE TECHNICS OF GARDENING. 173 



generation speak in George Milner's " Country 

 Pleasures " : 



"By this time I have got round to the old English flower-bed, 

 where only perennials with an ancient ancestry are allowed to grow. 

 Here there is always delight ; and I should be sorry to exchange its 

 sweet flowers for any number of cartloads of scentless bedding-plants, 

 mechanically arranged and ribbon-bordered. This bed is from fifty 

 to sixty yards long, and three or four yards in width. A thorn hedge 

 divides it from the orchard. In spring the apple-bloom hangs 

 over, and now we see in the background the apples themselves. 

 The plants still in flower are the dark blue monkshood, which 

 is 7ft. high ; the spiked veronica ; the meadow-sweet or queen-o'- 

 the-meadow ; the lady's mantle, and the evening primrose. This last 

 may be regarded as the characteristic plant of the season. The 

 flowers open about seven o'clock, and as the twilight deepens, they 

 gleam like pale lamps, and harmonise wonderfully with the colour of 

 the sky. On this bed I read the history of the year. Here were the 

 first snowdrops ; here came the crocuses, the daffodils, the blue gentians, 

 the columbines, the great globed peonies ; and last, the lilies and the 



And now to apply what has been said. 



Since gardening entails so much study and ex- 

 perience since it is a craft in which one is so apt to 

 err, in small matters as in large since it exists to 

 represent passages of Nature that have touched man's 

 imagination from time immemorial since its business 

 is to paint living pictures of living things whose habits, 

 aspects, qualities, and character have ever engaged 

 man's interest since the modern gardener has not 

 only not found new sources of inspiration unknown 

 of old, but has even lost sensibility to some that 

 were active then it were surely wise to take the 

 hand of old garden-masters who did large things in 

 a larger past to whom fine gardening came as second 

 nature whose success has given English garden- 



