s, for some terrace gardens on a
large scale, viewed perhaps from windows at a considerable distance,
and in a general way for pleasure grounds, ordered by professional
skill, and not by an _amateur_ gardener (which, mark you, being
interpreted, is gardener _for love!_), the bedding-out style is good
for general effect, and I think it is capable of prettier ingenuities
than one often sees employed in its use. I think that, if I ever
gardened in this expensive and mechanical style, I should make
"arrangements," a la Whistler, with flowers of various shades of the
same color. But harmony and gradation of color always give me more
pleasure than contrast.

Then, besides the fitness of the gardening to the garden, there is the
fitness of the garden to its owner; and the owner must be considered
from two points of view, his taste and his means. Indeed, I think it
would be fair to add a third, his leisure.

Now, there are owners of big gardens and little gardens, who like to
have a garden (what Englishman does not?) and like to see it gay and
tidy, but who don't know one flower from the rest. On the other hand,
some scientists are acquainted with botany and learned in
horticulture. They know every plant and its value, but they care
little about tidiness. Cut flowers are feminine frivolities in their
eyes, and they count nosegays as childish gauds, like daisy chains and
cowslip balls. They are not curious in colors, and do not know which
flowers are fragrant and which are scentless. For them every garden is
a botanical garden. Then, many persons fully appreciate the beauty and
the scent of flowers, and enjoy selecting and arranging them for a
room, who can't abide to handle a fork or meddle with mother earth.

Others again, amongst whom I number myself, love not only the lore of
flowers, and the sight of them, and the fragrance of them, and the
growing of them, and the picking of them, and the arranging of them,
but also inherit from Father Adam a natural relish for tilling the
ground from whence they were taken and to which they shall return.

With little persons in little gardens, having also little strength and
little leisure, this husbandry may not exceed the small uses of fork
and trowel, but the earth-love is there, all the same. I remember
once, coming among some family papers, upon an old letter from my
grandmother to my grandfather. She was a clever girl (she did not
outlive her youth), and the letter was natural a