32 A GARDEN DIARY 
remained how were the flower-beds to get them- 
selves filled? Only one answer to that question 
has ever presented itself to the professional 
gardening mind, and that is “Send to the nur- 
seryman.” 
Now that nurseryman may or may not be an 
excellent one. Ours, as it happens, may fairly I 
think be called so. Good or bad he is never 
a functionary to be approached without defer- 
ence, at least by those in whose eyes Thrift 
stands for something in the battle of life. ‘“ But 
common plants are so cheap” one is often told. 
Very likely, they may be ; indeed, judging by their 
catalogues, nurserymen stand habitually aston- 
ished before the spectacle of their own moderation. 
An average herbaceous plant—a lupin, or a lark- 
spur, let us say—costs as a rule about ninepence. 
It may sink as low as sixpence, or it may rise as 
high as a shilling. Anybody, it will be argued, 
can afford sixpence; some people have been 
known to spend a whole shilling without wincing. 
A very short walk along any ordinary garden 
border, calculating as one goes the number of 
sixpennyworths it would take to fill it, will be 
found an excellent corrective for such _light- 
heartedness. I made such a calculation myself 
only the other day, and the result was an 
eminently sobering one. 
Seeds on the other hand are honestly cheap. 
There are expensive seedsmen, but generally 
