4 TOWN AND WINDOW GARDENING 



ashes, soot, and lime are unsightly, and may spoil our 

 plants if allowed to touch them. A pail of salt and water 

 we find the least unpleasing medium when culprits must 

 be executed. 



In a town garden where there is room for them, no 

 plants do better than the Star-worts or Michaelmas 

 Daisies. They are so easy of cultivation and so comforting 

 late in the season, when the " bedders " of every public 

 and private garden have succumbed to cold and wet. Later 

 there are Chrysanthemums. 



Lilies and all bulbous plants show unexpected hardiness. 

 Our parks both east and west familiarize us with Snow- 

 drop, Crocus, Jonquil, Narcissus, and DaflFodil ; and to see 

 how happy Valley-lilies can make themselves within ear- 

 shot of the bustling Strand, we need only turn our foot- 

 steps towards the dim green gardens of the Temple, where 

 banks and parterres of them unfold their verdant cloaks 

 beneath every April sky. Farther west, if eyes could 

 pierce the trees and shrubs that guard the gardens of the 

 King and Queen at Buckingham Palace, or those round 

 Marlborough House, they would see Lilacs, Laburnums, 

 Pinks, and Roses ; and from the knife-board of a Bays- 

 water omnibus, if our field of vision were a little broader, 

 we should catch glimpses of Lord Ilchester's fair gardens 

 about Holland House, where languorous Lilies of Japan 

 luxuriate in all their native splendour, and much of their 

 native wildness ; and this but a stone's throw from the 

 Great Western Railway Station and the World's Fair of 

 William Whiteley. 



Among the gardens of the suburbs most of our town 

 difficulties disappear ; the many nursery, and market, and 

 Rose, and Rock, and Daffodil gardens that flourish in 

 London's outskirts abundantly prove this.' Once away 

 from fog and smoke, there are few limitations except 

 those that come of want of space ; but land is dear, 

 and there is little ground to spare, except for public 



