28 NOVEMBER 1941, Page 13

In the Garden Among the numerous elaborate garden-catalogues that have

appeared as usual about this date the best lays stress on the need for garden planning for the vegetables. There is perhaps much more to be done than is done in designing the potager, as the specialist designers confess. With cordons, espaliers and flowering verges it can be made a place of beauty as well as use. I was amused to see a large circular flower-bed, in front of a village elementary school, arranged with alternate circles of carrots (whose leaves are very lovely) and other root crops with a few towering maize plants in the elevated centre. For country-houses which have the advantage of a piece of water, the substitution of Kharki Campbell ducks is strongly recommended in lieu of fancy wild fowl. There is no species of bird—not even a Leghorn fowl—that will lay more eggs—and very heavy eggs- they are —within a year. They have the convenient habit of laying in the early morning hours, so may be let loose to forage for themselves throughout the greater part of the day, and they seldom do any