88 
HERBACEOUS GARDEN 
wonder that they cannot get their plants to look 
as well “ as the cottage gardens on my estate.” 
No, for that same quality of self-sacrifice is 
needed that makes a man, however tired after 
a hard day’s work under a hot sun, harvesting 
or haymaking, go out and tend his flowers, 
hoe up the caked earth round their roots, with 
hands tired and aching already, or carry water 
from a distant well for them before he sits 
down to rest. Surely that love for his flowers 
which all unknowingly prompts his care, must 
bear fruit in proportion to its lavish outpouring. 
Another cottage garden, formerly a little 
gem of its kind, with friendly brick walks 
and borders to the doors, filled chock-a-block 
with sweet gay flowers, has fallen into the 
hands of a cc small holder,” who has made a 
neat lawn in front, planted geraniums, and de- 
stroyed all the borders. No doubt his ambi- 
tion is satisfied, but no one now stops to look 
and admire as of old. All the charm has 
gone — it is incongruous. Just as one could 
never rightly place a cottage garden in front 
of a Georgian mansion, so one cannot fit 
lawns, landscape - garden effects, and long 
perspectives of herbaceous borders into one’s 
scheme for a cottage, or a suburban home. 
Let us suppose a garden of J acre in an 
