CHAPTER XIV 
MODERN GARDENING 
* f There is a garden, and a wilderness, 
And both are fair. 
Yet touch not nature’s own true loveliness, 
With useless care. 
“ But in your garden, work till stars appear, 
With toil and skill, 
Through dawning life, until the fading year, 
When all is still. 
“ Nature is mystic, like a hidden soul, 
Complete, sublime. 
Changing, returning, yet a perfect whole, 
For endless time. 
“ But conquer from the wild each flower that grows, 
In case some day. 
The Maker passing, stoops to pluck a rose 
Upon His way.” 
Sybil Amherst. 
F EW periods have witnessed a greater advance in gardening 
than the first decade of the twentieth century. Ten 
years before the close of the nineteenth gardening was still 
the passion of the few ; now it is the craze of the many. For 
every book on the subject that came out in 1895, a dozen 
appeared in 1905; for each person who then knew to what order 
a daisy belonged, perhaps twenty could now be found, able to 
quote with ease five-syllabled Latin names. This enthusiasm 
seems to be more than a passing fashion, and has penetrated 
various ranks of society, and the impress it has already made 
upon gardens is sufficiently marked to be lasting. Perhaps 
no better indication of the increase of those who appreciate 
beautiful gardens could be found than a comparison of the 
numbers of visitors to Kew. For some time after they were 
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