A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK 



close together at the base that it is difficult to chop 

 or saw them out without hurting the bark of the 

 ones to the left. All the young suckers are cut 

 away. They are of straight, clean growth, and 

 we prize them as the best possible sticks for 

 chrysanthemums and potted lilies. 



"After this bold thinning, instead of dense, 

 thickety bushes we have a few strong, weU- 

 branched rods to each stool. At first the nut walk 

 looks wofuUy naked, and for the time its pictorial 

 value is certainly lessened; but it has to be done, 

 and when summer side-twigs have grown and 

 leafed it will be fairly well-clothed, and meanwhile 

 the hellebores will be the better for the thinner 

 shade." Miss Jekyll then proceeds to describe her 

 visit, long before the above was written, to the 

 cob-nut nursery near Reading, where she pro- 

 cured her foliage. Here she saw "alleys of nuts 

 in all directions," and below them thousands of 

 the pale-yellow daffodil. Narcissus cemuus. It 

 was surely that visit and that picture which 

 finally flowered into the lovely reality of the nut 

 walk of Munstead Wood as it appears in 1918 in 

 the photograph under consideration. 



Since the descriptive passage above was written, 

 many other spring flowering plants have been intro- 



64 



