The Gentle Art of Gardenry 
This lias been a year to discourage the most eager gardener ; 
a mild, soft winter breaking into an early spring, cold and snow 
in ]\Iay and drought and heat all through the summer. In 
America we are inclined to think that France and England are 
happier countries climatically, but one utterly dejected English 
gardener told me that in England they have had frost in every 
month of the year with the possible exception of July, not all in 
one year, but within a period of ten years. This year there was 
frost each month; through June, on the twenty- tirst there was 
enough to kill beans and tender vegetables, and in a country of 
almost daily showers, no rain fell from the middle of jMay until 
late July. AVe grieve resignedly here when such imtoward 
conditions prevail, but our lives are not definitely saddened as are 
those of our English confreres. My visit to England in April 
coincided exactly with the April freeze that spoiled the fruit, 
nipped the buds of late-flowering shrubs, utterly ruined the 
earlier ones and laid a blight on the gardening world. What 
the drought has done to England and its inhabitants I know 
only from letters. But England was very beautiful to look upon 
even in the midst of its horticultural troubles and its famous 
gardeners very pleasant to meet in spite of their horticultural 
depression. I saw as much of it and of them as I could crowd 
into two frigid weeks during which my feet were never for one 
moment warm and my nose never for one moment w^hite. There 
was a good deal of bright, but wintry sun-shine and a tremendous 
amount of the most interested hospitality and in these I warmed 
my spirit and tried to forget my toes. The coal strike was at its 
height and even a nation unspoiled by central heating was 
shivery, so I was not too much blamed for a blue look about the 
mouth and a chronic sneeze. 
Almost my first visit was to that Dean of Gardeners, ]Mr. 
William Robinson, at Gravetye Manor near East Grinstead, 
Sussex. Gravetye is a beautiful sixteenth century manor house 
with magnificent chimney stacks and charming windows in the 
midst of what we would call ' ' rolling country. ' ' The interior of 
the house is as delightful as the exterior and the garden when it 
blooms perhaps outshines them both. When I arrived on a sunny, 
windy April day, Mr. Robinson in his wheeled chair was sitting 
on the broad path flagged with the same stone that the house is 
built of, and surrounded by a fine expanse of promising black 
soil. His own little Anenomes, Anenoine Rodijisoniona, bordered 
the path thickly and little plants were beginning to poke up their 
noses, but he explained that the bulbs in the grass were so many 
that he was not interested in garden flowers in Spring and I 
rather agreed with him. The Heath Garden was in its glory, 
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