12 OCTOBER 1951, Page 18

In the Garden

The too Irish gardens and allotments with their formula of cabbages-cum-potatoes reveal how beneficial has been the influx of English foreigners with freer ideas. One of these-I met, an ex-Commando Captain, grew and-cured his own tobacco in his garden and said he smoked two ounces of it a day for nothing. I noticed on my return a long row of tobacco plants in full pink flower in the gardens of the Wingfield- Morris Hospital at Oxford. One of the staff said to me—" We shall be

smoking our own cigars by Christmas." H. J. MASSINGHAM.