about it; stretches of lawn surrounded by slirubbery, borders 
filled with treasures from all over the world, a kitchen garden 
with great herbaceous borders, whose edge is the enchanting 
rockery I spoke of in the last Bulletin, the Jubilee Garden 
which was planted over the old sunken garden and along the 
moat in honor of the Queen's jubilee; cold frames and hot beds 
and glass houses filled with sweet and wonderful flowers. They 
tell me, in England that when a leaf falls in Aldenham three 
gardener boys crack their heads together as they stoop to pick it 
up and the tale might almost be believed from the perfect look 
of the whole great estate. Aldenham is flat and Mr. G-ibbs 
explains that the gardens were created from meadows, but it 
needs no hills and valleys to make it interesting. One of the most 
delightful things about it is the congeniality of the two gardeners, 
the lion. Vicary Gibbs and Mr. Beckett work together. They 
have worked together for thirty years and have only respect for 
each others knowledge. They cried together over the dreadful 
tilings that the nightly frosts were doing and examined each 
treasure as two consulting doctors might. In the garden Mr. 
Gibbs has set up a memorial tablet to the nine gardeners who 
died in the war. The place and those who work there are his to 
rejoice in and to mourn. 
There were many other days almost as thrilling as these, when 
I went to Kew and Wisley and Hampton Court iand less well- 
known, but no less beautiful and interesting private gardens. 
About the public gardens we should do more and I should like 
to ^vrite some information about them some day. 
I was frightened by the knowledge of all these English 
amateurs or would have been had they not been so kind and 
unpretentious. They have an endearing way of referring to all 
growing things as "he" quite as a member of the family, not 
always a beloved one but an individual. They know engagingly 
little about America and showed me plants from Florida, Cal- 
ifornia and Saskatchewan, evidently believing that they jostled 
each other in my garden on the Great Lakes and would give me 
a home feeling. They were bitter in their denunciation of Quar- 
antine 37 (and incredulous over the 19th Amendment). Mr. 
Gibbs particularly, to whom Professor Sargent sends all manner 
of American plants can send nothing to the Arboretum, though 
the Federal Horticultural Board frequently demands material 
from him. He cannot quite understand why so sharp a line 
should be drawn between an experimental ground in Wash- 
ington and one in Massachusetts. 
This is a very little to say of all these kind and famous people 
and their beautiful and famous gardens. All that my time 
permitted they let me see and sent me home grateful, admiring 
and awed by their knowledge and love of an art we are just 
beginning to understand. K. L. B. 
Garden Club of Illinois. 
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