76 FLOWER GARDENING 
reason that it was no garden at all. Yet it was 
very much of a garden to a dreamer of dreams, 
who naturally was not always over-careful to draw 
a distinct line between the substantial and the 
insubstantial. 
Treasures, not a few of them choicer from asso- 
ciation, had been brought together. If the idea was 
still lingering on the border of vagueness, there 
was a plain enough nucleus; and one the sounder 
because it was largely permanent. While the 
foundation was not laid, the first of the stones were 
on the spot. 
But that did not begin to be all of the initial 
season’s showing; else this. tale would be less 
interesting, as well as shorter. There was the 
experience, that had been accumulating the while 
the garden grew from nothing into the hope, if 
not the present semblance, of something. The 
dreamer had known flowers from childhood—had 
pottered with them indoors and outdoors; but for 
the first time in his life he had been handling 
hardy plants, other than a few bulbs. 
Already there was a feeling of conquest. The 
hardy garden had been sensed and a glittering of 
practical knowledge of its spring work, its summer 
work and its autumn work was indelibly impressed 
on the mind. Perennial and biennial were now 
fixed terms. Out of indefiniteness were beginning 
to come ideas as to succession of bloom in the 
garden, the use of blossoms and foliage in the way 
that the painter employs the pigments on his palette 
