sheltered them through the winter with | leaves, the miserable aspect of which is a little withered bracken, they had ap- not atoned for by the second flowering parently dwindled so by March that she of the rest. I must get rid of those again enquired compassionately what I congregated one hundred and sixty, intended to do with them. She was though I know that protest will be auswered by the middle of April, when raised in an influential quarter. Still, I they put forth long, vigorous shoots, can see that the tea-roses are increasing and were the pride of the garden all in favor; and when I carry in ી. branch through the summer and autumn a yard long, beautifully curved, of ramonths. Last winter I treated them diant color, and surmounted by a persimilarly; and again, since we had fect posy of large, delicate flowers, I twenty-eight degrees of frost, they am employing the best form of advowere cut down to the ground. But cacy in order to carry my point. Once what they are at this moment, I should prove that you can have rose-beds in require the help of her Poet to describe. flower for six months of the year, aud Faultlessness in flowers is almost as who will gainsay you? Sometimes I rare as in human beings; but these think I should like to have nothing but tea-roses are absolutely faultless. Their tea-roses; but the fit of unreasonable stems and their leaves are as graceful exclusiveness soon passes away. as their buds; they bloom continuously for six months; not one of them is of a bad, vulgar, or tawdry color; and they never suffer from blight, fly, or mildew. I carpet their beds with violas, purple, white, or yellow; and they tolerate, and indeed favor, these dwarf intruders, with the utmost amiability.

Thus, at present at any rate, everywhere are roses, roses." But the loveliest of all, be it said with reverence, are in the June hedges. All the rosegrowers in France have not produced a flower that gets so close to one's heart as the English eglantine.

The

In Poet's Walk the dog-roses find a With this honorable and blameless congenial home; and the sweet-briars record, compare the annual register are gradually doing themselves justice of the hybrid perpetuals. At this mo- in the outlying borders. Just now, ment they are looking their very best, they are covered with their pale pink having got over their troubles of the flowers, which will, when autumn winter and spring, and not yet suffer- comes, be glowing coral hips.. ing from the trials of autumn. A hun-yellow Austrian briar, which thrives so dred and sixty are in full blow at the heartily in many a cottage garden herefurther end of the tennis-ground abut- about, has not yet condescended to ting on the orchard; and I dare say make much of a show in mine, though many of them would be pronounced I trust it will, in due course. I someprize roses. But all through the win- times think there are flowers that reter months they were no more beauti- fuse to decorate the superba civium ful nor sightly than currant-bushes. potentiorum limina, the porches and At the end of March they were cut parterres of the well-to-do, and, with back by the pruning-knife, so that they the discriminating partiality of true resembled young gooseberry-bushes, kindness, reserve their full beauty for similarly treated. By the end of April, the narrow territory of the poor. and all through May, they were the "You cannot want me," they seem to favorite resort and provender of grub say, "for you have so many other flowand green-fly; and now that, with the ers and shrubs. Here I am the only aid of finger-and-thumb and syringe, flower, dearly prized and exclusively they have outgrown their enemies, honored. Must I not therefore do my many of them have flowers which, best for those who entertain me so tenhowever lovely for a day or two, fade derly?" in an exceedingly unbecoming manner, and with no eye for color. In August and September most will show rusty

Lamia will not concede to roses the place of primacy I claim for them, and puts in a good word for the white pinks

that are now in their midsummer | fence of those terrible villa borders, beauty. The whole of the north border where every plant is a specimen, is is edged with them; and thus there is duly staked and tied and trained, and they all stand at stated and goodly inA running ribbon of perfumèd snow, tervals from each other. I pray you Which the hot sun is melting rapidly, avoid it. But, if you run into the opa foot wide, and between fifty and sixty posite extreme, and crowd certain heryards in length. They are only the baceous plants overmuch, you curtail old-fashioned white pinks, but they are their growth and their grace, and incur far more sweet-scented than their pre- the risk of losing them altogether. I tentious successors, for which it is easy am greatly interested in seeing the reto find room elsewhere; and, after sult of a new border I have made in sundown, they follow one's footsteps the extreme north angle of the garden, with their penetrating fragrance. They and which Veronica has christened last in full beauty for a whole month; Poet's Corner-I believe she will in and, even when their withered heads time label every nook and walk with have to be clipped off with the shears, his name because, before I made the their silvery foliage still makes a deli- border, it was a favorite resort of his cately effective edging. Behind them, when the wind was in the east, and he English, Spanish, and German irises wanted to read in the open air and yet are competing with each other, though be suug and warm. There are two these last flowered a little earlier than walls, at right angles to each other, the others. I do not pretend to grow neither of them more than thirty feet the more delicate irises, nor can I long. Both are old; one of them is boast of the recently imported beauti- of grey stone, the other of red brick. ful, flat Japanese irises. Irises like to Against them, and therefore hiding be dry in winter and moist in spring them completely, were some tall but and early summer; and that is a com- rather scrubby laurels, the favorite bination of conditions not easily con- nesting-place of the blackbirds. trived in England, and is quite beyond The laurels were cut down and stubmy resources. Veronica thinks it is grubbed, and the roots, branches, and due to my incapacity, for she is so ac- leaves all burnt in a heap, whereby I customed to bend the inorganic to her provided myself with a certain amount will indoors, that she imagines the of wood-ash. The ground on which organic and the living can be made they had been growing proved to be as equally pliable. Ever since she saw bad as it well could be; so out it came the Iris Susiana flowering faultlessly to the depth of three feet. Broken on stalks nearly three feet high near bricks, mortar waste, and accumulated Florence, she has wondered why she dry rubbish of all kinds, even to batdoes not find them in the garden that I tered tin cases and empty blackinglove. But I have watched them grow-bottles, were thrown in, inexpressibly ing in English gardens more favorable to the delight of Veronica, who thus to the iris than mine, and they were saw disorder disappear and buried out but doleful specimens of a gorgeous of sight, and pound and shed cleared of tribe. A garden is not a collection of their abominations and made clean and curios. It is for the most vigorous, the sweet again. Effectual drainage was most lovely, and the most fragrant thus secured. On the top of this I flowers, that room should be found; placed a layer of half-rotted emmetand many of these demand, for the casts, so as to keep the drainage fairly full display of their charms, that the open. The superincumbent soil is a atmosphere should be seen all round mixture of loam, stable manure, leaf them, and that they should not be too mould, river sand, and burnt vegetable much elbowed by their neighbors. It matter; and if herbaceous things, and is, perhaps, a little incautious to say bulbs as well, do not flourish in quite this, for it may be pressed into the de-lordly fashion in this compost, the con

15

nection between cause and consequence obtaining a sharp and definite appremust have been severed. At any rate, hension of the difference between the Gaillardia Grandiflora, Helenium Pu-present and the remoter past. I came milum, Funkia or plantain lily, Telekia, comparatively a novice to the trade, Eryngium Amethystinum, the hardy and began with no arrested set of dog Plumbago-such a dear little cerulean mas concerning the making of a garflower, growing among seemingly dis- den. Accordingly, I educated myself colored leaves! - Centaurea Macroce- on my mistakes, plauting trees, desiguphela, Trollius Europaeus, will have ing borders, and arranging groups of a fair chance of distinguishing them- beds, in utterly wrong fashion. Is it selves; and, to judge by their present not much better, and certainly it is far appearance, they are going to do so. more interesting, thus to pass through Behind them, and either trained ignorance into knowledge, rather than against the wall, or standing in relief to put oneself a passive spectator into against it, are Kerryia, both single and the hands of a professional gardener, double, Forsythia, Buddleia, Pyracan- whether of the formal or of the landthus, Pyrus Japonica, Ceanothus, white scape school? No one can rightly call and lavender-colored clematis, and one his garden his own, unless he himself or two tea-roses, among them the made it. The Poet, too, has a garden, dainty Marie van Houtte. Where the and one by no means to be disdained; walls meet, they rise into the air like and Veronica told me that when, the two waves that form a double crest; other day, some tactless person asked and up their joint buttress I am grow-him which of his works he likes best, ing a Clematis Montana, with a sort of suspicion that it will end by running all along the top of the wall. When it does so, its white supramural band will be a worthy rival of the white pinks, and will flower even before them. have not exhausted the list of herbaceous things in the border; and in front of them are daffodils, irises, lilies, among them Saint Bernard and Saint Bruno, which the Italian devotional painters are so fond of introducing into their pictures. Their Latin names are Liliago and Liliastrum. The border is six feet wide, and is edged by a narrow row of rough stones, along the rim of which, next spring, shall flower Cyclamen Coum, Chionodoxa Lucilice, Scylla Siberica, Leucojum Vernum or spring snowflake, crocuses, snowdrops, London pride, and many a stonecrop, saxifrage, and sedum.

he replied, "My garden." I think if I had written his poems, and were asked that question, I should make the same reply. A garden that one makes oneself becomes associated with one's perIsonal history and that of one's friends, interwoven with one's tastes, preferences, and character, and constitutes a sort of unwritten, but withal manifest, autobiography. Show me your garden, provided it be your own, and I will tell you what you are like. It is in middle life that the finishing touches should be put to it; and then, after that, it remains more or less in the same condition, like oneself, growing more deep in shade, and more protected from the winds.

I am well aware that, according to orthodox notions, against which I have not a word to say, the approach to a house in the country should not be Veronica and I often say we wish we through the garden, but on the other could look once more, just for a mo- and northern side of the dwelling, s0 ment, on the little narrow sward in that seclusion should not be invaded front of the house, as we saw it that by carriage-wheels, and you may be day when old Father Time was mowing able to say "Not at home" without the neglected grass. But sudden traus- incurring suspicion of inhospitality or formation scenes are to be witnessed unfriendliness. But we are humble only in pantomimes, and Nature per- folk, with a home which, if beautiful is mits things out-of-doors to change so unpretentious, and when you drive gradually that one is prevented from through the orchard-walk to see us,

T

you come ou the front door, standing No one can admire less than I do a wide open, on the dining-room and so-called garden-for a garden it is drawing-room windows, and on that not - surrendered wholly to symmetricascade of foam-white roses I lately cal lines or groups of color; and I once spoke of, so that you see the whole nearly banished them from the garden charm of the greater portion of the that I love. But careful experience garden at once; north border, south showed me that they serve as an invalborder, the front of the house, the uable foil to the other and more numerlawn, the tennis-garden, the oak, the ous beds I have called permanent, and orchard; only the South Enclosure, whose flowers soar irregularly into the Poet's Walk, and, of course, the little air, and which are orderly without bewalled garden behind the older part of ing prim or trim. I have a great liking the manor, being withheld from your for the strong-growing caune; and this view. There are seventeen beds on year I have a couple of beds which the lawn, and there is a wide border of Veronica declares are already most sucflowers under the dining-room and cessful, and which will look much more drawing-room windows. But the beds luxurious a mouth hence, and will on the lawn are not congregated close continue in that condition till supertogether, as in a terraced or strictly venes the first sharp frost. The beds formal garden. They lie upon the are parallelograms, twelve feet by eight. lawn, some of them being at consider- In their centre are the cannæ, liberable distance from each other, but none ally manured and copiously watered. of them losing touch, so to speak, of Outside them are rows of scarlet zinthe rest; and, if one of them even nias, and outside these grows variewere removed, the entire harmony or gated maize, green and white. The balance would be destroyed. In the bed is edged with the dwarf profusely centre of the lawn are two crescent-flowering yellow zinnia. There is shaped beds of rhododendrons, enclos- nothing formal about these beds, any ing in their curve, but with a circle of more than there is in the neighboring grass between them, a round bed whose ones, where larkspur, evening primchief glory are two well-established roses, ribbon grass or gardeners' garand profusely flowering Clematis Jack-ters, phloxes, fuchsias, everlastings, mannii, clambering up rough pine- blue cornflowers, annual gaillardias, stems. Of the seventeen beds, twelve are what I may call permanent beds, containing either herbaceous plants eked out in spring with bulbs and in summer and autumn with annuals, or tea-roses and their carpet of violas. These last are four in number, and run round the edge of the gravel curve immediately in front of the house two and two, with a non-permanent starshaped bed between them. There are only five beds not thus disposed of; but I dwell on them because they provide for me the solution of a coutroversy about which so much has been said and written. In spring, as I have said, they contain tulips and forget-menot.

clarkias, lupines, dahlias, sweet-williams, pinks, aud mignonette, fight it out among themselves as to which shall have the lion's share of the space. But these carelessly ordered and highgrowing flowers would not be a hundredth part so effective as they are, were it not for the contrast afforded by the beds of regular and low-lying plants in their vicinity. Have I said, before, that exclusiveness in a garden is a mistake as great as it is in society? If I have, may I say it again, for it is an important truth that needs to be reiterated. Moreover, it will sometimes happen that, towards the beginning of October, if not before, the more ramBut in summer they are reserved pant flowers, having nearly outbloomed for and dedicated - yes to gerani- themselves, begin to wane; and then ums, iresine, white-leaved centaurea, the lingering bloom of the less beautiageratum, and even sometimes to cal-ful bedded-out things come as a sort of ceolarias, geraniums, and lobelia. compensation, and prolongs the life of

the garden, and even of the summer. “Are you calculating," I asked, on And then their extremely brilliant hues -suit the natural mood of autumn,

intimidating your husband? Do not make too sure of that. And then, you see, Veronica is very good about it, for I have flowers along all the kitchengarden walks, in the copse garden as well as in the walled garden; and if

flowers and hollyhocks coming up there in various places to bloom in September. Those white sweet-peas you are wearing, and that become you so admirably, were plucked where the sun-dial haply might stand; and scarlet-runners, later on will diversify the sober utility of cauliflower and parsnip. Life, La

It is all very well," said Lamia, "to prate of your beds and your bor-you will go and look you will see sunders, your perpetuals and your annuals, your tea-roses and your pæonies; but I shall never believe in you till you turn your little walled kitchen-garden into a real pleasaunce, intersect it with box edgings and paths of broken brick, grow rosemary, rue, lavender, old-fashioned heartsease, little Chinaroses, and dwarf fuchsias, in rectangu- mia, is a lesson in compromise; and lar beds, have a sun-dial in the centre with a sage apophthegm in a dead language inscribed on it, educate a peacock to strut slowly along the coping of the wall, and induce Veronica to let her maids lean out of those fascinating windows in mob-caps and purfled aprons. To Jericho with your Jerusalem artichokes, your early strawberries, and your sybaritic asparagus. Grub up your Walburton Admirable, your Kirke's Blue, and your Louise Boune, and let hollyhock and sunflower use the old red bricks for background."

we are never further from being satisfied than when we have got all we want. That unattainable peacock is perhaps the surest guarantee of my content."

"I shall never stir you into insurrection," she said. "You are as bad as the Poet."

She had been led to return to an old subject, I discovered later in the day, by the perusal of a volume she had brought with her, and which professed to give both sides of the question between the advocates of landscape "Dear Lamia," I replied, "why do gardening and the champions of the you probe an ever open wound? I formal garden. She had it in her hand shall not die in peace unless I fulfil again, when, after dinner, we betook that dream. The place is made for it, ourselves to a spot I have not deand I plan it over and over again, day scribed, but where, in the warm sumand night, night and day. But what mer days I always find our guests pass would Veronica say? Already she much of their time. Almost adjoining protests against the narrow space ded- the house, and nearly in a line with it, icated to potato and onion, to cos let- is a long, substantial shed, in which in tuce and to curly kale, and declares she the old days the cattle must have been is ashamed sometimes of the paucity of stalled during the winter months. our winter vegetables. Moreover, she the side towards the yard it is faced bewails, not without some justification, with rough, strong match-boarding; my lavishness on the garden that I but, on the garden side, fortunately, it love, and she knows perfectly well, as is of stone. Both sides are now well I do myself, that the sun-dial and the covered with Irish ivy; and on the peacock project would mean another gravel path which winds along its gargardener, to say nothing of the inci- den side, stand six umbrageous limedental making of kitchen-garden ground trees. But, to Veronica's eternal elsewhere." honor, for the scheme was mainly hers, "What cowards men are "" mur-all the old cattle stalls were taken out mured my companion. "Veronica and used for firewood; and, being of might be your wife, instead of your ancient, hard, and thoroughly seasoned sister." oak, they warmed us for nearly one

On