A GARDEN BY THE SEA 



It is fortunate that we are not all provided with equally 

 favourable sites and soils. How monotonous would 

 gardening become if one knew that he had but to act, 

 deed for deed, as his neighbour in order to attain exactly 

 the same garden result. We should feel disposed to 

 throw down our spades and trowels if the end of our 

 efforts might be foreseen by looking over our neighbour's 

 boundary. If the difficulties to be overcome could be 

 formally catalogued, the whole art of gardening would 

 be reduced to a wooden system in which there would 

 be little room for surprise or pleasure. But Fate has 

 decreed that our gardens shall differ in spite of the 

 apish copying spirit which still fills so many of our 

 breasts. Our sites vary, our soils vary, and our atmos- 

 pheric conditions vary to such an extent that any 

 gardener, if he is to produce a result of any worth, 

 must perforce use his native intelligence in order to 

 overcome the specific difficulties peculiar to his plot 

 of earth. 



Gardening readers will remember Dean Hole's story 

 of the enthusiastic flower-loving navvy who, obtaining 

 the post of gatekeeper on the railway, was provided 

 with nothing but a barren gravel pit as apology for a 

 garden. " Twelve months afterwards," says the Dean, 

 " I came near the place again — was it a mirage which I 

 saw on the sandy desert ? There were vegetables, 

 fruit-bushes and fruit-trees, all in vigorous health ; there 

 were flowers, and the flower-queen in her beauty, 

 ' Why, Will,' I exclaimed, ' what have you done to 



