OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS 



Through the open windows of house or cottage the 

 eyes should be able to feast on the beauty of freely 

 growing flowers quite as easily as if they were cut and 

 stuck in glass or porcelain vase like so many heads of 

 traitors on the city gates. 



It has been said that all children are born scientists, 

 but that only a small number of them ever pass on to 

 the condition of artists ; and it has always seemed to me 

 that there is much truth in the statement. Children are 

 ever putting the eternal why ?" to the great confusion 

 of their parents, pastors, and masters ; and it is the 

 curious, the gigantic, the rare, which always calls forth 

 their attention and admiration. Struwelpeter is more to 

 a child than all the beauties of a Charles Robinson, and 

 to few men or women is it given to derive as much 

 pleasure from beauty as from that which is usually called 



interesting." Hence, thj ordinary criticisms of gar- 

 dens ; hence, also, the usual aims of gardeners. So 

 many people desire the gaudy, or the unique, or the 

 curious, that we are apt to look upon gardens merely as 

 appliances for the production of quaint or monstrous 

 flowers. 



The analysis of beauty has ever a dissecting-room-feel 

 about it ; still, as he who would become a skilful 

 surgeon must be first a practical anatomist, and as he 

 who would be a painter must first study his materials 

 and the dodges " of his craft, so must the would-be 

 artist in gardening dissect the beauty of perfect gardens, 

 and study such apparently dull materials as earth and 

 manure, and practical garden books. 



I have said that the beauty of an old-fashioned garden 

 is due largely to the feeling of repose and settled-down- 

 ness which it yields. Every plant looks as though it 



belongs" (as we say in Cornwall) to be where it is, 

 as though it always was there, and as though there is no 

 intention of shifting it in a week or two to some glass- 



