CHAPTER XVI. 



NOOKERIES ON THE HOME GROUNDS. 



•OW shall we treat our garden or 

 lawn nookeries? to coin a phrase 

 which means, I take it, an aggrega- 

 tion or congeries of nooks and cor- 

 ners combined into a single isolated 

 picture. On general principles 

 nooks of the garden attain a value 

 not only because in them, as Lord 

 Bacon quaintly puts it, " when the wind blows sharp you 

 may walk as in a gallery," but because these nooks afford 

 the atti'action of a surprise, that may be in the truest sense, 

 when jjroperly taken advantage of, a pleasurable surprise. 

 In a word, there must be a succession of nooks, surprises in 

 numbers, all within the limits of one small spot, to make 

 your true nookery, for a bare corner is in no sense a nook- 

 ery. Memory must surely recall to all of us such spots 

 down in the orchard or behind the barn, and in the edge of 

 the woods at the back of the house. The old apple tree 

 .with the grape-vine trailing over it, down by the drinking- 



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