1 JULY 1949, Page 22

In My Garden I recall nothing of the works of

the eighteenth-century woman novelist, Regina Maria Roche, except a phrase worth recording." In a novel called The Children of the Abbey (1798), she writes of the garden, and says, "The part appropriated to vegetables was divided from the pait sacred to Flora." The appropriation in my own garden is marked bpi a half-circular yew hedge which is causing anxiety because it is being again attacked by the scaly pest that turns the foliage to a soot-black dryness and finally chokes it. I must go into consultation about this, for the usual remedy of nicotine-wash has already been tried.

RICHARD CHURCH..