AN ISLAND GARDEN 71 



It seems strange to write a book about a little 

 garden only fifty feet long by fifteen wide ! But 

 then, as a friend pleasantly remarked to me, " it 

 extends upward," and what it lacks in area is more 

 than compensated by the large joy that grows out 

 of it and its uplifting and refreshment of "the 

 Spirit of Man." 



I have made a plan of this minute domain to 

 show how it may be possible to accomplish much 

 within such narrow compass, and also to give an 

 idea of an advantageous method of grouping in 

 a space so confined. I have not room to experi- 

 ment with rockworks and ribbon-borders and the 

 like, nor should I do it even if I had all the room 

 in the world. For mine is just a little old-fash- 

 ioned garden where the flowers come together to 

 praise the Lord and teach all who look upon them 

 to do likewise. 



All through the months of April and May, 

 when the weather is not simply impossible, I am 

 at work in it, and also through most of June. It 

 is wonderful how much work one can find to do 

 in so tiny a plot of ground. But in the latter 

 weeks of June there comes a time when I can 

 begin to take breath and rest a little from these 

 difficult yet pleasant labors ; an interval when I 

 may take time to consider, a morning when I may 

 seek the hammock in the shady piazza, and, look- 

 ing across my happy flower beds, let the sweet 

 day sink deep into my heart. From the flower 

 beds I look over the island slopes to the sea, and 

 realize it all, the rapture of growth, the deli- 

 cious shades of green that clothe the ground, Wild 



