BOOK REVIEWS. 



121 



" My Garden in Spring." By E. A. Bowles, M.A. 8vo., xx + 308 

 pp. (Jack, London, 1914.) 55. net. 



Some gardens are for display, restless, clamorous, insistent ; some 

 for retirement, quiet but for the songs of birds or the voices of children, 

 gardens of sweet scents ; some to make homes for plants, few or many, 

 because they are loved and cherished. 



There are many of the last in England about the homes of poor 

 as well as rich, where to walk is a pleasure, and the greater if while 

 you walk the gardener tells you tales of this plant and that. The 

 author's garden at his father's house is such a one. For a quarter of 

 a century planting and replanting, altering here, preserving there, in 

 the ground about his ancestral home, Mr. Bowles has been making 

 homes for the plants his catholic taste has led him to acquire. Some- 

 times these pleasant gardens house but few types of plants, their 

 owners' favourites, roses, carnations, narcissi, tuhps, sweet peas; but 

 here we are taken round a garden which might boast — only to boast 

 would be alien to garden and gardener alike — a collection of flowers 

 greater and more varied than is possessed by many a botanic garden. 



It was a happy thought to v/rite an account of such a garden in its 

 aspects in spring, summer, and autumn (for this is but the first of three 

 books about it, and all who read it will eagerly wait the coming of the 

 other two) ; for it gives an idea of the possibilities and the limitations 

 of a single garden ; it tells of the successes with plants through a 

 thorough knowledge of and sympathy with their requirements ; of 

 failures where those requirements could not be, or were not, met ; of 

 happy accidents in grouping ; of the use of plants for various positions 

 for ornament and the like. Into such a garden as this the clamour 

 of the battle for or against formal gardening does not enter ; each 

 position in the garden is treated on its merits so as to form homes 

 for plants ; and not the least use this book will serve is to show that a 

 garden housing an enormous variety of plants may also be made a 

 beautiful one, full indeed of such pictures as the beholder of stereo- 

 typed garden or pleasure grounds does not dream of. 



The author takes his reader round the garden, tells him how this 

 plant and that originated, where one or another floral gem came from, 

 and how and why he has succeeded or failed with the plants he shows 

 you ; all the while telling anecdotes of plants or people who grew and 

 probably gave them to him. You are made to see the plants as their 

 lover sees them, and never once do his words degenerate into 

 catalogues of plants, which, however instructive and even amusing 

 they may be, are out of place in a book describing a garden and how 

 it was made and grew. You cannot help but feel that if you really 

 were with him in his garden he would load you with plants as he has 

 given you of his knowledge, and you would come away richer and 

 happier for having been there. 



No doubt every gardener worthy the name — and our author is 

 pre-eminently worthy the name — has some favourites among his plants, 

 and even our author's cathoHc taste has not prevented him from having 



