Although we have gained much since former days, yet I
regret that some of our gardening habits should have been forgotten. The mediaeval garden bench was made of turf, or camomile or pepper- mint raised upon brick supports. That was a charming device which even in our now wetter climate might still be revived. We have lost also the old agreeable passion for arbours and tunnels, and we miss from our gardens the long alleys of sweet briar and honeysuckle trained to an arcade Mounts, also, were a valuable feature, and where (as at Knole) they still survive they offer a pleasant link between the flower garden and the outside world. We have lost the art of treillage which the French still use so prettily, and which forms a quick and graceful background to any new garden. I wish also that we could revert to the days when garden paths were made of thyme, penny royal and burnet. Nor do I feel any hostility towards palings as an incident in formal beds. But most of all do I deplore the disappearance of our English vineyards,. There was a time when even this damp island was a wine-producing country and the Saxons used to call October the " wyn month." As many as thirty-eight vineyards are mentioned in Domesday, and one can still trace the old vine terraces at Sutton Valence or in the Cotswolds.
There is no reason that I know of why the old sweet wine of Gloucestershire, so famed in the twelfth century, should not now supplement our lack of foreign wines. * *
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