June 1, 1901. 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
63-5 
LAING’S BEGONIAS 
NOW IN BLOOM. 
Gloxinias , Streptocarpi, &e. AWA %° 0 1Z %& Y AUt . 
Unequalled as a Floral Display. Visitors are cordially invited; free admission. 
Frequent trains from the City and West End to Catford Bridge and Catford Stations. 
CATALOGUES POST FREE., 
Telephone: 6o SYDENHAM. 
JOHN LAING & SONS, 
Begonia 9 Caiadium , Olivia, and Gloxinia Specialists, Seed, Plant, and 
Bulb Merchants, &c. f 
Contractors to the Military Exhibition, Earl’s Court, S.W., 
Forest Hill, S.E., & Catford, Kent. 
- - Begs to offer 
RETARDED LILY OF THE VALLEY CROWNS 
in best possible condition, for delivery in small and large quantities, throughout the season. 
PRICES ON APPLICATION. 
Dersingham, King's Lynn, NORFOLK . 
ABBEY PARK , LEICESTER . 
ANNUAL FLOWER SHOW & GALA, 
August 6th & 7th, 1901. 
Far Schedules and Particulars apply — 
Jno. Burn, Hon. Secretary, Abbey Park. 
" Gardening is the prrest of human pleasures, and the greatest 
refreshment to the spirit of man "— Bacon. 
©artenm0 
Edited by J. FRASER, F.L.S., F.R.H.S. 
SATURDAY , JUNE ist, igox. 
The Editorial and Publishing Offices are 
now removed to 4, Dorset Buildings, 
Salisbury Square, Fleet St., London. 
Editorial matters are to be addressed to 
the Editor. 
All other communications and Remit¬ 
tances must be addressed direct to the 
Proprietors— 
HICKS, WILKINSON & SEARS. 
NEXT WEEK’S ENGAGEMENTS. 
Sunday. June 2nd.—Ghent Show. 
Tuesday, June 4th.—R.H.S. Committees; Devon County 
Agricultural at Torquay (3 days), 
Thursday, June 6th.—Linnean Society Meeting. 
“ |g[ Garden Diary.”* —Lovers of gardens, 
' that is, amateur gardeners who take 
to writing books on their experiences, 
pleasures or otherwise, in their hobbies, 
their successes or failures, are evidently on 
the increase, and have been for some years 
past. There can be no objection to this so 
long as they have anything entertaining to 
tell us, for even the most orthodox gardener 
can while away his leisure time in reading 
an interesting book on the subject of his 
profession as a relaxation to his more 
matter of fact duties. We have testimony 
of this in the books written by such ama¬ 
teurs as the Very Rev, Dean Hole, the 
Rev. A. Foster-Melliar, Miss Jekyll, and 
*A Garden Diary, September, 1899—September, 
1900. By Emily Lawless. Methuen & Co., 36, 
Essex Street, Strand, W.C. London, 1901. Piice 
7/6. 
others. The lady who writes the book 
under notice may have been spurred on to 
do so by reading the books of the latter 
or some other sister gardener, but she has 
evidently had an ambition to travel and 
write about her experiences and observa¬ 
tions from an early period of her life ; but 
at length finds her scope reduced to giving 
some account of her home experiences, 
though not strictly limited to her own terri¬ 
tory for ideas. At the outset we wish she 
had given us a clue to the contents of her 
book, either as contents or an index, but she 
gives neither—an omission which the busy 
would-be reader will resent. Her nationality 
now and again bubbles over, though no 
objection need be taken to the fact that she 
originally hailed from the Sister Isle, where 
the skies are more frequently overcast and 
dripping than in England, and the grass is 
greener ; for if writers under those con¬ 
ditions and surroundings would hold the 
“ mirror up to Nature,” we should certainly 
have bits of colour in a different setting or 
framework than in Britain. Do not the 
poets sing to us in the garb of their own 
native land, whether that be hilly or flat, 
breathing of the green wood, the grassy 
downs, the brown mountains, the oozy, 
weedy river meandering through the level 
meadows, or the rushing mountain torrent ? 
The writer under notice speaks of the 
downs with their tones of “vinous purple, 
shading into indigo,” and states that her 
gardening experience has been gained some¬ 
where to the west of Surrey. On another 
page she admits in as many words that she 
starts her theme for the day without a 
definite object in view, without an agenda 
paper, without an index. True, a diary 
or calendar is regulated by the round of the 
days and months and seasons, but the dates 
should be filled in with an epitome of the 
day’s work. “ A garden is a world in 
miniature,” she says, and it takes “many 
varieties of gardeners to exhaust the sub¬ 
ject of gardening.” Her “ indefatigable 
old Cuttle,” like many another, has a par¬ 
ticular passion for certain flowers to which 
he gives whole-hearted attention, the others 
he cultivates merely as a duty. He has 
grown with the garden, however, since he 
turned the first green sod, until he has 
become intimately identified with the whole, 
and ranges over all “ followed by his 
obedient satellite and shadow.” Though 
originally a Surrey labourer he is a prodigy 
in the matter of work, and what he is told 
to commence in the following week he ac¬ 
complishes next day. And his “ smile of 
pity ” is his only apology that the projected 
work is a’ready accomplished when up¬ 
braided for the high pressure at which he 
toils. The writer was much troubled with 
a certain weed the botanical name of which 
she could never discover, but describes it 
as having “narrow, fleshy leaves; a mass 
of roots, constructed of equal parts of pin 
wire and gutta-percha; the meanest of 
pinky-white flowers, and a smell like sour 
hay.” Cuttle came to the rescue and called 
it “ Snaking Tommy,” with the instinct of 
Adam. The soil and the weeds of this 
garden were evidently determined to hold 
their own, for they were responsible for the 
deaths of a long list of garden plants sent 
by fiiends, and in a short time was no 
memorial left save a paper list of names. 
During the course of three years, however, 
a goodly array of alpine or rockery plants 
was reared from seed as the result of care¬ 
ful attention and perseverance. 
While moralising on the subject of weeds 
the author makes some very apt observa¬ 
tions on the unenduring character of the 
labour of humanity when pitted against the 
ceaseless energy of wild Nature. The 
owner and maker of a garden, particularly 
one that has recently been reclaimed from 
the woodland, learns that he or she is not 
the real owner at all but merely an intruder 
or trespasser, for a few weeks or years 
upon the grounds of the original and long- 
established proprietors, the Bracken, Briers, 
Honeysuckles, and birds, which may be 
checked for a time by the unremitting 
energy of man, but directly the latter rests 
upon his oars the weeds creep in upon him 
from all sides. The Bracken which 
originally possessed the soil could only with 
great labour be prevented from making in¬ 
roads upon the flower borders. Only in 
towns can man pretend to have remodelled 
the existing state of things to his own 
liking. In every-day life the owner of 
a garden and his professional assistant 
go on preaching that they will follow 
Nature, and will have nothing but a natural 
garden, a flowery wilderness it may be, yet 
they go on planting in lines, squares, and 
parallelograms. The author had been 
struggling with couch grass for two days, 
ankle-deep in it, aided by her indefatigable 
Cuttle and his assistant. The fence put 
up to keep back the rabbits and every other 
trespasser, seemed only to harbour and en¬ 
courage the intrusion of the enemy. She 
had on a former occasion intervened on 
behalf of the Rose Campion, rescuing it 
from the rubbish heap and planting it where 
it might enjoy possession of a half acre of 
copse. This they did unmistakably, and 
likewise sent myriads of seedlings ahead of 
them to possess and re-occupy the recently 
reclaimed garden. She came to the con¬ 
clusion, like the colonist, that after all there 
was something like possession in having 
naked earth guarded by straight lines of 
split-wood fences. She had not at the time 
of writing got to that stage herself, but felt 
that a “ sort of nurseryman’s attitude " was 
creepingover her towards everything tainted 
with wildness. All of the above happened in 
September, and much more. Turning to 
Christmas Day we find this garden lover 
relating the pleasure she experienced at the 
close of the day in a sudden but brief 
flicker of sunshine that lit up the landscape 
with unusual splendour for a moment before 
the gloom of a winter’s night. 
On January 8th, 1900, she is delighted 
rather than otherwise that Cuttle has set 
fire to the mountains of garden rubbish that 
have been accumulating, and created a most 
