46 A GARDEN DIARY 
we please. Yearning to show that our spirits 
are above all trammels, that we are as free 
as the birds in the air, we nevertheless all 
sit in identical armchairs, eat the food the 
cooks provide us, and in most other respects 
exhibit about as much originality as so many 
stair-rods. 
It is only necessary to consider what happens 
every day of the week in the garden to per- 
ceive that this is the case. We have adopted 
the most independent line possible; we have 
vowed that ous gardens shall be natural ones, or 
nothing. We adore flowery wildernesses, we 
declare. We want our plants to grow as Nature 
intended them to do, and not as the hireling 
gardener does. We intend to put a limit to the 
eternal bolstering up of our soil with all sorts 
of extraneous elements; above all we will have 
nothing to say to the clipping of our shrubs 
into unreal shapes, nor yet to the planting of 
our bulbs, and other flowering plants into lines, 
squares, and parallelograms, but all shall be a 
melting and a blending of one harmonious form 
into another; every detail, as far as the eye 
can reach, being subordinated to the larger 
and more important spirit of the landscape as 
a whole. 
So we say! And yet, after the flag of free- 
dom has been thus ostentatiously raised, what 
happens? As often as not we find ourselves, 
