Preface 
S OFIERO — which means “Sophie’s Rest ” — is a Royal 
residence crowning a hill on the south coast of 
Sweden. Formerly it was the favourite home of 
the late King Oscar and Oueen Sophie, who built the 
house sixty years ago and gave it its name. When their 
grandson, the present Crown Prince of Sweden, married 
the British Princess Margaret, elder daughter of the 
Duke of Connaught and only sister of the Princess 
Patricia, Sofiero was among their wedding gifts ; and 
ever since it has been the home most beloved of the 
Crown Prince and Crown Princess and their children. 
Here at Sofiero, when released for a short time from 
the exacting duties of her position, the Crown Princess 
spends a large portion of her days out-of-doors, working 
with her own hands till she has made the grounds blossom 
in all directions, even to the remotest nooks and crannies. 
And the following pages describe her initial efforts and 
experiments in transforming a neglected orchard, and an 
overgrown, tangled hillside, into a veritable paradise of 
flowers. 
The Crown Princess desires me to emphasise the fact, 
however, that this book was written in the first instance 
solely with a view to interesting the Swedish nation in 
gardening, since in Sweden garden-making is not the uni- 
versal and popular hobby that it is in England. Her 
Royal Highness is concerned, therefore, lest these chapters 
should be too elementary for British readers, more 
especially the one about rockeries, a form of gardening 
particularly suited to (and at the same time somewhat 
misunderstood in) Sweden. 
But there is a freemasonry among flower-lovers that 
takes little count of the word “ elementary.” Those of us 
