A GARDEN DIARY 35 
poor little savings? your petty extravagancies ?” 
we might imagine her saying, “that they should 
be likened to mine?” Further, by an odd 
paradox, it is upon her wastefulness that our 
thrift rests most securely. We possess say one 
solitary plant of some given kind, and we find 
that with that single plant her lavishness has 
freely provided us with the material of a 
hundred, possibly many hundred others. There 
is scarcely a plant we can name that by some 
means or another—by division, by layers, by 
seeds, by cuttings, or by some other equally 
simple variation of the garden craft—may not be 
multiplied almost without limit. Truly there is 
something staggering about such fecundity, and 
the brain of even the strongest gardener might 
be expected to whirl as he contemplates it. 
Following in imagination the history of almost 
any flowering plant—yonder pimpernel astray 
on the gravel will do—giving it only time 
enough, a fair field, and not too many rivals, 
and we shall find that it has gone far towards 
peopling every waste place within reach; nay, 
if the process could be continued long enough, 
by the mere law of its organic existence its 
descendants are capable of reddening their entire 
native countryside for a dozen miles around. 
