140 The Wild Garden 



True taste in the garden is, unhappily, much rarer 

 than many people suppose. No amount of expense, 

 rich collections, good cultivation, large gardens, and 

 plenty of glass, will suffice. A garden of a few acres 

 showing a real love of the beautiful in Nature, as it can 

 be illustrated in gardens, is rare ; and when it is seen 

 it is often rather the result of accident than of design. 

 This is partly owing to the fact that the kind of know- 

 ledge one wants in order to form a really beautiful 

 garden is very uncommon. No man can do so with 

 few materials. It is necessary to have some know- 

 ledge of the wealth of beauty which the world contains 

 for our gardens ; and yet this knowledge must not 

 have a leaning, or at any rate but a very partial leaning, 

 towards the Dryasdust. The disposition to ' dry ' 

 everything, to concern oneself entirely with nomen- 

 clature and classification, is not the gardening spirit 

 —it is the life we want. The garden of the late 

 Mr. Hewittson, at Weybridge, had some of the most 

 delightful garden scenes. Below the house, on the 

 slope over the water of Oatlands Park, and below 

 the usual lawn beds and trees, there is a piece of heathy 

 ground — charming beyond any power of the pencil 

 to show. The ground was partially clad with common 

 Heaths with little green paths through them, and 

 naturalized in the warm sandy soil were the Sun Roses 

 which are shown in the foreground of the engraving. 

 Here and there among the Heaths, creeping about in 

 a perfectly natural-looking fashion, too, was the Gentian- 



