The Garden Grows 25 
Never has praise from any lips so rejoiced my heart as this 
unexpected tribute. 
The third moment came two years later when a very skilful 
amateur gardener made me an afternoon visit. We talked 
intelligibly without the need of an interpreter. She knew 
candytuft and Dianthus without being told; also spoke under- 
standingly of the deeper mysteries of Physostegia, Stokesia, 
Boltonia, Euphorbia corrolata, things representing the higher 
education in a garden. 
By and by she slipped away from my side, and while I was 
prattling on with an ordinary denizen of this lower world, she 
threaded her way through the paths from terrace to terrace. 
“How delightful your garden is,’”’ said she on her return. 
“You can really walk in it, and how many charming, unex- 
pected nooks and corners you have!” 
Sweet is the praise of a friend. Had I not cherished in my 
heart for years this privilege of walking in my garden? not 
merely stepping down into it and out again, and seeing the 
whole at a glance as I did the first year, but take a leisurely 
stroll from bed to bed, from one elevation to another, and 
choose which way one should go. Her words touched the 
tenderest depth of my aspiration. 
I was much impressed that first summer with the total lack 
of dignified reserve that exists in the floral world. The riot- 
ous way that self-respecting flowers, with centuries of culti- 
vated ancestry behind them, hobnobbed over the rustic fence, 
was a scandal. The raspberry bushes, still left in the un- 
claimed territory, leaned over the wall and dallied with the 
cosmos. The climbing nasturtiums, which were supposed to 
make a decorous barrier between the sheep and goats, lost 
their reserve and got into many disgraceful entanglements 
with the tramps outside. The bindweed and wild buckwheat 
vines found ready admission to the select society of African 
