according to him every plant is wrongly named and no one knows the 
right name except himself. If ever you mention a plant he will in- 
terrupt you to tell you that you have probably named it wrongly. 
The real plant of that name is "not in commerce," but it is growing in 
his garden. In fact he is always talking a kind of scandal about plants, 
and he makes you feel that gardening is all a matter of labels, as it 
often is with him. For, if he has the label right, he does not mind 
much what happens to the plant. It shall at any rate die under its 
right name and be authenticated by its tombstone. One would 
not mind this foible about names if he were not so inordinately 
proud of it; if he did not make one feel that gardening was an arid 
business which no one understood but himself, and which was not 
worth understanding. His very plants seem to resent the ugliness of 
his mind, for he too usually has a "buy-and-die" garden and nothing 
thrives with him but liver-wort, which he will probably tell you is 
wrongly named. 
Very likely he is really learned about plants with a perverse, 
Teutonic learning, or he may have strong views about the art of 
garden design. No one in Europe, he will say, knows what a garden is : 
you must go to Japan to see gardens. Or if you have been to Japan, 
you must go to Kamschkatka, or at any rate somewhere wmere you 
have not been. For his one real interest in gardening is to make out 
that other gardeners are wrong, whatever they know or do. If they 
grow their plants well, they name them wrongly or arrange them 
wrongly. He himself can do anything with them except grow them. 
That is denied to him, because he has no love of plants. He may talk 
about their beauty in flowery language, but his language is more 
flowery than his garden. That is always ugly with the ugliness of his 
mind. An egotist cannot have a beautiful garden any more than he 
can have beautiful manners. 
After all, the good gardener is he who has a beautiful garden, even 
if he grows only the easiest plants in it. For it is never easy to have 
a beautiful garden. You cannot do it if you want to excel others in 
growing difficult plants, or if you are eager to follow the latest fashion 
in garden design, or if you care more for the names of plants than the 
plants themselves. That wonderful gift which some gardeners seem 
to have for growing anything is no magic; it comes from the love of 
plants. They think of their plants more than they think of themselves. 
And that other gift for making a garden beautiful is no magic either. 
It comes of loving the garden as well as the plants. If your garden 
is to be well designed, it must be a part of your home to you and not 
merely a plot for growing plants in. You must regard it as a place to 
