TOWN-GARDENING 5 



and general gardens, where again individual joys are 

 lost. 



The suburban garden, in spite of all the hard things 

 that have been said of it, is really not so much to be 

 despised, and so large a part does it play in the social life 

 of the twentieth century, that it is worth a moment's 

 thought. 



Suburban gardens are of many kinds ; there are all 

 manner of notes in the scale. The squalid ones — alas ! 

 some are squalid — we see in London's shabbiest border- 

 lands. They often belong to houses filled with many 

 different families, and are a kind of no man's land. Hardly 

 can we call them gardens ; little enough is grown in them, 

 though sometimes among the straggling Runner-beans 

 and rubbish-heaps there will be a tree, a beautiful spread- 

 ing tree, like a green-winged angel. Then there are the 

 tidy patches of the fairly well-to-do workman ; some 

 made hideous by mounds of shells and grottoes, others 

 filled with useful and pretty plants. So we go upwards, 

 step by step, to the good-sized strip or more ambitious 

 villa garden. Wonders are done in these. Many a busy 

 City man, whose garden is not far from the Marble Arch, 

 knows all about Roses, and might give lessons on Grape- 

 growing and Orchid-forcing to his relations in the real 

 country. 



Suburban gardens naturally have not the same good 

 chances as are enjoyed by country gardens, but they do 

 know some joys that may be envied. One is the birds. 

 It is not that there are more of them, but those there are, 

 are such a pleasure. When a new bird of a rarer kind 

 than ordinary is coaxed into the precincts of one's own 

 domain, how great the interest, and how many friendly 

 traps are laid for him in the way of food, water, and 

 material for building. And wild flowers ; when un- 

 famihar seedlings appear, one knows not whence, here is 

 another joy. Few people in country gardens know every 



