CHAPTER XI 



THE SMALL SUBURBAN GARDEN 



" The size of a garden has veiy little to do with its merit, — it is 

 the size of the heart and brain and the goodwill of the owner that 

 will make his garden either delightful or dull." — G. Jekyll. 



The small Suburban Garden — it is time some one said a 

 good word for it. What other place has been so much 

 abused, maligned ? It may, it does, in fact, go on im- 

 proving with the march of time and the general up- 

 waking of the gardening world ; but the ill name sticks, 

 and will most likely continue to do so till the cult of the 

 motor-car drives everybody out of the towns to live in 

 the suburbs. Yet, if the truth were known, for the last 

 thirty years at least the little garden spaces that skirt our 

 towns have, for the room they occupy, given more 

 pleasure and done more good than the like area in any 

 other part of the King's dominions. 



The suburbs of London are certainly looking up. 

 Thanks partly to the motor-car, they are no longer the 

 terra-incognita they used to be, for it is impossible for 

 people to drive out in any direction without making 

 acquaintance with them. Travelling by road in this 

 way, one gets a much better idea of the capacities of the 

 suburban garden than is possible from the windows of the 

 railway-carriage. These, especially as we are just leaving 

 London, show us only the pathetic garden of the flower- 

 less kind, belonging mostly to the very poor ; some with 

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