i6 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS 



create a garden. His aim in life being to kill care, he 

 desired nothing more eagerly than to be constantly 

 occupied. For three years he spent fully one half of 

 his days in bringing into his territory leafmould and 

 soil, clay and manure. He soon had a good protective 

 screen of pines, euonynus, privet and hazel, and only 

 then did he seriously begin to plant his garden. He 

 had, during those three years, raised crops of clover, 

 trifolium and the like, digging them again into the newly 

 created soil from whence they came. 



He read all the gardening books on which he could 

 lay hands, he saw all the gardens within walking dis- 

 tance, and he studied the wants of every flower before 

 he sowed or planted it, just as though it were an 

 honoured guest whom he were inviting. He had no 

 rule-and-compass scheme before his eyes, and planted 

 his shrubs and flowers in those situations where they 

 might most healthily yield their beauty and their frag- 

 rance. Such paths as his garden has are merely gravelled 

 developments of the beaten tracks which usage indicated as 

 necessary or convenient ; and I am afraid that they would 

 meet with the disapproval of that great authority, Mr 

 Reginald Bloomfield, who has said that a garden should 

 be laid out in an equal number of rectangular plots where 

 everything is straightforward and logical." 



My friend is nearly twenty years older than when he 

 began to create his garden, and it has already acquired 

 much of the character of an old house to which successive 

 additions have been made. The year through, the earth 

 is draped and decorated with beautiful plants. Aconites, 

 Snowdrops, Crocuses, Primroses, Violets, Fritillaries, 

 Columbines, Pinks, Roses, Lilies, Sunflowers and all the 

 host of old-fashioned flowers. 



The great problems of architectural " gardening, 

 'landscape " gardening, and the rest, did not interest him. 

 So simple and unpretentious was his little house that an 



