BOOK REVIEWS. 



291 



interest and spent more time in their gardens, and less in frivolity, 

 fewer would suffer from nervous prostration and the necessity for the 

 multitude of sanatoriums would be avoided. Flower gardening is 

 pre-eminently a woman's occupation and diversion." 



" Our Mountain Garden." By Mrs. Theodore Thomas (Rose Fay). 

 8vo., 212 pp. (Macmillan, London and New York, 1904.) 6s. 6d. net. 



The mountain garden here described must have been a very fasci- 

 nating and beautiful spot when complete and fully matured. The 

 natural scenery of woodland and rocky boulders was utilized in the 

 formation of a " cultivated " wild garden. The effect of Lobelia 

 cardinalis and tiger lilies in a dark swamp locality overhung with 

 trees would be very fine, while broad plantings of Lupines, Colum- 

 bines, Anemones, Trilliums, and Oxalis, in woody knolls and hollows, 

 with harebells, edelweiss, Dicentra, and soapwort on open ledges 

 gave fine masses of colour when in bloom. 



It was certainly a pity the authoress did not study gardening a bit 

 before launching out on so large a scale, and the failures she had at first, 

 due to ignorance in all horticultural matters, must have made her hard 

 work very disheartening. 



Instead of starting her garden with good plants from a trustworthy 

 nursery firm, she used seeds, and, as she states in the beginning of 

 the book, " fifty little inch-high seedlings did not go far towards filling 

 a bed 100 feet long and 10 to 16 feet wide." But she wrestled heroically 

 with the disappointments that accrue from sowing seeds in sun-baked 

 uncultivated clay, and made the common mistake of digging into it 

 vast quantities of sand (as some of our English enthusiasts do the 

 " road grit " of the Borough Councils, well lubricated with petrol, tar, 

 and dust-laying chemicals), only to find that more plants died than 

 lived. But at last all difficulties were overcome, with wonderfully good 

 results crowning her perseverance. 



The book is profusely illustrated from photographs, and makes 

 interesting reading. 



My Garden in Summer." By E. A. Bowles, M.A. 8vo., viii -|- 

 316 pp. (Jack, London, 1914.) 5s. net. 



The reader of the companion volume, " My Garden in Spring," will 

 eagerly accompany the author through his summer garden. His 

 journey, as earlier in the year, will be enlivened by anecdotes, some of 

 the plants themselves, others of incidents only remotely connected 

 with the plants yet suggested to the author by the plants he shows, 

 and he will be rewarded by many a hint, always modestly, never 

 didactically given. Irises, Roses, Geraniums, aquatics and succulents, 

 and a whole host of smaller or less conspicuous plants come in for 

 notice. The black-and-white illustrations are admirable, and there 

 are also several coloured ones. 



