158 A GARDEN DIARY 
we can, sparaxis, ixias, bobartias, the early white 
gladioli, and others, are all ready to hand, 
followed by the various lesser irises, winding up, 
at perhaps their best point, with xiphium and 
xiphioides. 
The one indispensable point—here again dog- 
matism appears !—is that such gardens should be 
so close to the house as to keep up the idea of 
being merely an adjunct, or flowery courtyard to 
it. With this idea in our minds anything like 
distance is fatal. You must be free to step into 
your garden from your door, or with no more 
interval than two or three steps, or the breadth 
of a gravel walk. Garden fanatics as many of 
us already are, and—as life increases in strenu- 
ousness—more and more will yearly become, it 
is our interest obviously to spin out our play- 
time all we can. Now nothing so helps us 
towards this, or so effectually counteracts our 
Arch-enemy, as to have some little settled place 
so cunningly contrived that even 4zs malignity, 
backed by its worst agents—sleet, hail, fierce 
winds, cutting rains,—fails to reduce it to a 
condition of mere despairing sloppiness; mere 
forlorn, and death-suggesting desolation. 
