THINGS WORTH DOING 277 



view ; and in the arboretum, where one of each of a 

 hundred different kinds of Conifers stand in their fine 

 young growth, to see and admire the individuals only, 

 and to stifle my own longing to see a hundred of one 

 sort at a time, and to keep down the shop-window 

 feeling, and the idea of a worthless library made up 

 of odd single volumes where there should be complete 

 sets, and the comparison of an inconsequent jumble 

 of words with a clearly-written sentence, and all such 

 naughty similitudes, as come crowding through the 

 brain of the garden-artist (if I may give myself a 

 title so honourable), who desires not only to see the 

 beautiful plants and trees, but to see them used in the 

 best and largest and most worthy of ways. 



There is no spot of ground, however arid, bare, or 

 ugly, that cannot be tamed into such a state as may 

 give an impression of beauty and delight. It cannot 

 always be done easily ; many things worth doing are 

 not done easily ; but there is no place under natural 

 conditions that cannot be graced with an adornment 

 of suitable vegetation. 



More than once I have had pleasure in taking in 

 hand some spot of ground where it was said " nothing 

 would grow." On two occasions it was a heap of 

 about fifty loads of sand wheeled out of the basement 

 of a building, in one case placed under some Scotch 

 Firs, in another under Oaks and Chestnuts. Both 

 are now as well covered with thriving plants and 

 shrubs as any other parts of the garden they are in, 



