84 A GARDEN DIARY 
the contrary, for utilitarian reasons of such beauty 
as Nature had originally endowed them with. 
Yet, under the influence of a little kindly sun- 
shine, how they still gleam, those poor plots ; 
how the few green things left in them manage 
to prink themselves out, and to respond genially 
to that genial greeting! ‘And is it not slightly 
discreditable,” I reflected, ‘‘that we, who call 
ourselves gardeners, and have deliberately taken 
in hand similar, often much better plots, specially 
with an eye to beautifying them, should again 
and again completely fail in doing so; should 
again and again spend thought, time, money, 
and the sweat of the brow—chiefly of other 
people’s brows—and all that they should, as 
often as not, be rather worse at the end than 
at the beginning?” 
The truth is that this business of “ beautify- 
ing,” into which many of us have recklessly 
plunged, is a very much more difficult and a 
very much more delicate operation than we are 
prepared to admit. To the truly discerning, 
the truly nature-loving eye, the smallest scrap 
of plant-producing ground, the homeliest corner 
of earth—“long heath, brown furze, anything” 
—has potentialities of beauty and interest which 
even the best gardener rarely develops as 
they might, and ought to be developed. It 
is not merely that individually our powers are 
weak, our taste poor, our ignorance great, our 
