260 STUDIES IN GARDENING 



the Japanese are apt to insist in their decorative 

 treatment of flowers; and thus we seem to see Japanese 

 art in the plants themselves, so strong is the influence 

 of that art upon our minds. 



But however much we may admire and imitate it, 

 it is not our art, and we cannot make it ours. Fa- 

 miliarity with it only makes the things most commonly 

 represented in it seem the more foreign to us. If it 

 were not for Japanese art many Japanese plants 

 would now seem quite homely to us which we still 

 find incongruous with the ordinary plants of our gar- 

 dens, and which for that reason we cannot love as 

 much as we admire them. Beauty is not the only 

 quality for which we love a flower. The very fact 

 that flowers are the most beautiful objects in nature 

 makes their associations so powerful that often these 

 associations gather between us and the flower itself, 

 so that we cannot see it exactly as it is but only through 

 its associations. Often, of course, they are connected 

 not only with its appearance, but with its scent, and 

 the sense of smell calls up associations more quickly 

 than the sense of sight. But for its scent. Mignonette 

 would be a mere curiosity, and grown only in botanical 

 collections. Bluebells are beautiful flowers, but it is 

 their scent even more than their beauty that evokes 

 for us all the delight of woods in May, the songs of 

 birds and the whisper of leaves in the wind, as well 

 as the coloured light and shadow. And it is the faint 

 odour of Primroses which most powerfully reminds 

 us of the mossy places in which they grow and of the 



