CHAPTER XIV 



COTTAGE GARDENS 



Cottage folk are great lovers of flowers, and their charming; 

 little gardens, in villages and by the roadside, are some of 

 the most delightful incidents of road-travel in our southern 

 counties. 



The most usual form of the cottage flower-garden is a 

 strip on each side of the path leading from the road to the 

 cottage door. But if the space is a small one it is often 

 all given to flowers. Sometimes, indeed, the smaller the 

 space the more is crammed into it. One tiny garden, that 

 I used to watch with much pleasure, had nearly the whole 

 space between road and cottage filled with a rough staging. 

 It was a good example of how much could be done with 

 little means but much loving labour. There was a tiny 

 green-house, of which the end shows to the left of the 

 picture, that housed the tender plants in winter, but it 

 could not have held anything like the quantity of plants that 

 appeared on the staging throughout the summer. There 

 were hydrangeas, fuchsias, show and zonal geraniums, 

 lilies and begonias, for the main show ; a pot or two of 

 the graceful francoa, and half-hardy annuals cleverly grown 

 in pots ; a clematis smothered in bloom, over the door, and, 

 for the protection of all, a frame- work, to which a light 

 shelter could be fixed in case of very bad weather. 



It must have given pleasure to thousands of passers-by ; 



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