30 TOWN AND WINDOW GARDENING 



This was a triumph indeed ; enough to make the 

 Clementi-Smiths at St. Andrew's Rectory envious. 



In these roof-gardens there are joys undreamed of by 

 the stranger. A real honey-bee buzzing and working 

 over the flowerbeds, even a spider — a real garden spider, 

 with a shining web, a country-looking weed, a stinging 

 nettle, — a lively one that knows how to sting, and on one 

 bright still evening, when the sunshine lingered on the 

 gas-work's chimneys, a humming-bird hawk-moth flutter- 

 ing well-pleased among the flowers. 



After these flights among the tiles and chimney-stacks 

 it is tame work, talking of the City gardens of the level 

 ground ; but, after all, they are the commonest and most 

 generally useful. The dreary churchyards now made into 

 play-grounds, where a few simple flowers bloom, and 

 there is a shrub or two ; we may see such any day at 

 St. John's in the Waterloo Road. And there are the old, 

 old gardens about the Temple and the Law Courts ; how 

 many generations of lawyers they have cheered (not one 

 space can be spared) ; and who has not felt a thrill of 

 joy when nearing St. Paul's Cathedral, to see the fresh 

 green of the trees and the indescribable beauty of the 

 rustling, swaying boughs, so strangely sweet in such a spot. 



Not the least good done by our City gardens is the 

 welcome given by them to bird and butterfly ; even the 

 seagulls did not come to London till after we had planted 

 trees on the Embankment and laid down turf. The 

 more gardens we make, the more country visitors will 

 come to them, gladdening the Londoner with rural 

 sounds. 



" A cuckoo cried at Lincoln's Inn 

 Last April, somewhere else one heard 

 The missel-thrush with throat of glee 5 

 And nightingales at Battersea." 



