The charm of this garden is due in no small measure to the flowers, 

 which on every side, beneath the peach and almond and nespole trees, fill 

 the beds to overflowing ; but they seem to flourish best in the shadow of 

 the great lemon-pots, their roots tucked snugly away in the moist earth 

 beneath the broad pedestals. Here luxuriate great clumps of orange day- 

 lily, larkspurs white and pink, blue and purple, the fragile-looking French 

 and Shirley poppies, the sun-loving zinnia, and the marigold and 

 gaillardia rejoicing in the warm earth. Madonna lilies, too, and roses 

 of every sort, and sturdy hollyhocks add to the wealth of colour, with 

 iris purple and white and yellow, one of the most desirable being of a 

 lovely pale primrose with many small blossoms on one tall stem ; but 

 the exquisite pale blue iris that fringes the terraces out in the farm is 

 too common for admittance. Nor are the sweet-scented old-fashioned 

 things forgotten, such as carnation and pink, mignonette and cherry-pie, 

 rosemary and lavender — what lavender, for in Italy it gives a full 

 head of bloom, exceedingly beautiful but unhappily only too quickly 

 past ! How well, too, this garden shows the artistic value of the 

 ripening seed-vessels, which in tidy English gardens are usually 

 considered an eyesore, the soft, grey, feathery heads of valerian and 

 the great seed-pods of the common poppy — for hundreds of years drawn 

 with such loving care by artists, but, like so much that is picturesque, 

 called " unsightly " by the gardeners who promptly consign them to the 

 bonfire. 



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