PICTURESQUE ENGLISH COTTAGES AND THEIR 
DOORWAY GARDENS 
By P. H. Ditchfield, M.A., F.S.A., F.R.H.S. 
IV. 
E NGLISH villagers are very proud of 
their gardens, which form such a charm¬ 
ing feature of their rural life. Charles Dick¬ 
ens, in one of his finest passages, wrote: 
“In the culture of flowers there cannot, by 
their nature, be anything solitary or exclu¬ 
sive. The wind that blows over the cottage 
porch sweeps over the grounds of the noble¬ 
man, and as the rain descends on the just 
and on the unjust, so it communicates to all 
gardens, both rich and poor, an interchange 
of pleasure and enjoyment.” 
When strangers visit our shores, or when 
we first return from foreign travel, one of 
the first sights which gives pleasure and grat¬ 
ifies the eye, is the sight of the wayside cot¬ 
tages and their bright little gardens, the 
home of many old-fashioned flowers, the 
source of the cottager’s supply of fruit and 
vegetables. These gardens combine utility 
with beauty. 
Flowers encir¬ 
cle the cabbage 
plants and the 
potato crop; 
and although 
the cottager, 
who has a wife 
like unto a 
fruitful vine 
and many olive 
branches round 
about his table, 
is sorely tempt¬ 
ed to increase 
the area of his 
kitchen garden 
and plant his 
“taters ” and 
carrots in the 
soil once sacred 
to his flowers, 
he can scarcely 
harden his heart the little garden of the shalfleet post office 
to uproot the plants in which he takes so 
great a pride. 
The flowers, too, find a zealous friend in 
the busy housewife who tends them and 
waters them, sometimes with the contents of 
her teapot (hydrangeas seem to love cold 
tea), and watches over them as flowers love 
to be watched. She finds time, in spite of 
the olive branches, to care for these other 
plants which make her garden gay and 
bright, and values far more the gift of some 
roots and cuttings than a present of money. 
The walls of the cottages are usually cov¬ 
ered with creepers. A vine is trained about 
the porch. A Virginia creeper soars as high 
as the topmost gable and chimney-stack, 
and in the autumn clothes the cottage with 
its mantle of beautiful mellow brownish-red 
leaves. Climbing roses are not forgotten, 
and many a cottage can boast of its fine 
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