4 
THE HEART OF A GARDEN 
to see them. All the deciduous trees in the garden have 
shed their leaves, it is true, but only to reveal the infinite 
variety and grace of their intimate structure. Winter, 
despite his reputation for seals and secrets, has many 
disclosures, and this, perhaps, is at once the most in¬ 
teresting and the most pleasing to the eye. Robbed of 
their green draperies they stand revealed—these trees 
that summer dresses; while the dim rich evergreens— 
cypress and laurel, holly, and ivy; the stately groves of 
rhododendron, with ilex and arbutus, cedar and deodar, 
and box and yew—stand fast in their dark mail, hugging 
close their mysteries. 
Now it is an old pleasure renewed to note once more 
how the tall poplar’s delicate outer framework aspires, 
from fragile-seeming curve to curve almost mesh-like, 
climbing slenderly from beginning to apex, woven in fine 
rhythm upon a pearl and primrose sunset. The blunt¬ 
fingered ash waves supple arms towards you and above; 
the neighbouring oaks, less disguised by summer’s veil 
than any other tree that grows, show forth their native 
property of strength inflexible, slow of growth and hard 
of grain. The oak is a fine stalwart tree, but he would 
seem to be the symbol of another age than this. 
To my mind he is of the Middle Ages; he has, in a 
measure, the remoteness of medievalism and the majesty. 
You are too apt to people the sward below his out¬ 
spreading branches with folk in vair and velvet, and 
harness of damascened silver and gold, knights in chain- 
armour, and ladies with the hennin and the cote-hardie, 
to consider him an intimate. He is rather the ultimate 
outpost of old romance. And yet the bare hawthorn’s 
