Planning the Paths 
and the Flower-Beds 
garden seats invite one to rest and enjoy to the full 
the rose-scented air, while the bees are humming 
everywhere. 
In the very centre of the garden, just by the cross- 
roads, i.e., where the two broad paths cross, is an octagonal 
home-made well, built of sandstone found on our own 
grounds down by the sea. Everybody who sees it takes it 
for granted that the well must be very old, and must have 
stood there for a century at least. For this particular 
kind of stone contains a quantity of iron-ore and acquires 
very soon a warm brownish colouring. But truth must be 
told — our “antique well,” alas! was constructed in the 
year 1 9 1 1 . 
An open space round the 
well is paved with the same 
kind of stone, in the corners of 
which there are little flower- 
beds, These are somewhat 
raised, and are edged with 
low stone walls. This year 
we had planted these little 
beds with begonias — a dif- 
ferent colour in every bed. In 
former years we once had flax, 
then we had petunias, and the 
year after that geraniums— 
in white and pink varieties. Nasturtiums in the 
On each side of these flower corners we put large red 
flower-pots with white marguerites that busy, generous 
plant which never tires of putting forth fresh blooms. 
In the crevices between the large flagstones of the 
paved space are white thyme and dwarf campanula. But 
the large tufts of radiant blue veronica longifolia, that are 
cropping up everywhere in the crevices, have just planted 
themselves. They are a gift of Nature ! And so are the 
daisies, a salmon-pink Diantkus barbatus , delphinium, and 
the many golden patches of stonecrop. 
The entire “square ” is surrounded with large flower- 
c 
17 
