My Garden in Spring #224023

What would they say now if they were led into the garden through which we are now going to be conducted by its creator? Never before having seen a place fdr growing plants in, never having heard the names of Ella combe or wolley-dod — or, if they have, connecting them with no vitalising work or idea — haw will their noses not corrugate in scorn on merely perceiving plants — only plants, plants well grown, plants happy, plants well suited and consulted and made at home. But there are others, less rich, who will be glad of traversing such holy ground, and learning how the hills can be made to yield up their secret, and their children taught to forget the far high lands of their birth, and feel themselves contented and at home within a dozen miles of London. The essence of the real garden is the insignificance of the garden itself; the soul of the real garden lies in the perfect pros perity of the plants of which it is the home, instead -of being merely, by the modern reversal of right laws, the expensive and unregarded colour-relief of its titanically compounded cliffs of stucco and Portland cement. Come into Mr. Bowles's garden and learn what true gardening is, and what is the real beauty of plants, and what the nature of their display. A lowly piece of ground, wandering here and there in gentle natural ravines and slopes. No vast structures, but bank added to bank as the plants require it, and nothing asked of the structure except that it be simple and harmonious, and best calculated to serve the need of the little people it is to accommodate — to accommodate.