The Garden Grows 21 
den—some of it being coaxed, and some quietly appropri- 
ated—wood ashes, leaf mold from the woods, sand and 
manure. I had a man place the larger boulders in the corner, 
where the long-talked-of seat was made, and the smaller ones 
T laid up in a low wall on two sides. This was another com- 
promise with the original idea. I had intended to have the 
stones hauled away—just where was not clear, but some- 
where. But this use of them as boundary walls proved a much 
easier solution; and from this first makeshift disposition of the 
stones came the later construction of the garden walls, which 
are not only one of the chief beauties of the garden but have 
proved to be of the greatest value to me. Of these walls I 
shall speak more at length later. A rustic fence on two sides 
was made from young spruces from our woods, the vine was 
woven through the boughs of trees into an arbor over the stone 
seat, and finally everything was in readiness for planting my 
seeds. Measured by the labor expended on bushes, boulders, 
the rustic fence and preparing the compost, the twenty-five- 
foot garden was enormous; but when enclosed by walls on 
three sides, it shrank to the size of a postage-stamp. I con- 
soled myself with the thought that everything is dwarfed when 
measured by Nature’s yardstick. Her areas are so vast that 
the ground plans for the most spacious house become aston- 
ishingly small when staked out. 
When I came to follow the diagrams made for sowing seeds, 
I saw that too many things had been crowded into a small 
space, and though the plans were followed in a way, I hap- 
pened upon a much safer method of distribution, that I still 
use, which is to scatter the packages of seed over the allotted 
ground, and when the bed is thus apportioned, one can better 
judge how much space should be given to each variety. 
I planted five and twenty varieties of seeds, but recall only a 
few of them, and these are remembered chiefly for their mis- 
