OUR GARDENS.* IT may be very truly said of works
on the garden that "of making many books there is no end." But the great number of books about gardening given to the world just now is really an excellent sign of the interest which most people nowadays take in the subject. It is, of course, rarely that such an expert as Dean Hole can be induced to write a book of • Our Gardena. By S. Reynolds Hole. "Haddon Hall Library." London,: Dent and Co. Us. 6d.) good advice to the humble followers of his rake and spade. For it is not only in the cultivation of roses that Dean Hole is so great an authority. This book proves that in the herbaceous border, in the rock-garden, and in almost all the other parts of the garden, he is equally at home. The message.he preaches is, in essentials, that of what may be conveniently called—without wishing to disparage other modern leaders—the school of Robinson. In details Mr.
Robinson and the Dean differ rather widely, especially—as we are told in the book before us—on the great question of whether roses (bush - roses, be it understood, not stan- dards, which are to both anathema) are, or are not, to be grown in beds carpeted with pansies, stonecrops, rock-plants, Jrc., &c. Avoid bare spaces -of earth- and- carpet with dwarf plants, cries -Mr. Robinson. Don't turn your rose-beds into receptacles of the leavings of your rock-garden. Grow your roses alone, remonstrates the Dean. And the puzzled disciple turns: fronr one to the other, and strives in vain to reconcile the disagreeing preceptors. But this is a small detail, and though on other little points, such as the proper shape of flower:beds, the reader may detect considerable divergence of opinion,. still both Mr. Robinson and Dean Hole are prophets of . what will surely be known to gardening students two hundred years hence as the "Late Victorian Apotheosis of the Natural. Garden."
'The-most striking difference lb this Wok from the majority of garden-books is in the writer's attitude of mind. The reader feels as he reads that it has been written by a man who is not only a gardener of gardens, but, if we may paraphrase the words withoutirreverence, by one who has been made a gardener of men. There is the constant thought at the back of the author's mind of the effect of the garden upon the gardener,as well as.of the effect of the gardener upon the garden. Here is a paragraph from the chapter on the cottage garden which illustrates this point, and the lesson it teaches cannot be too often impressed on people who, living in the country, control in any way the lives of their poorer neighbours :— " I would earnestly appeal to all who have influence to support these efforts of the County Councils, and the great landed proprietors, and to do this from the highest motive, from our love as Christians, and from our duty as patriots, to bear one another's burden, and to work for the common weal. To me it seems that it is not a charit- able concession, nor a matter of expediency, but an obligation, a right, and a claim, that the labourer should have some share in the land. He.that ploweth should plow in hope, and he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. The husbandman that labouretit must be first partaker of the fruits.' Squires and parish priests (and I have had experience in both these vocations, and know what each may do) can be most powerful allies in this noble enter- prise, this happy endeavour to convince their neighbours that, be it never so humble, there's no place like home. The former may grant small additions of land, and may advise the tenant how to make the • best of it. He may give bricks for a sty, and timber for a hovel, should prosperity suggest a cow. He may request his head-gardener and his farm-bailiff to pay an occasional visit, and the former might spare a few roots from his herbaceous border, a shrub or a tree from his nursery.' These extensions and kindnesses should be the rewards of industry, and, encouraging the recipient, would promote it in others. It is sad to hear the complaint from labourers, that although the private soldier may rise to command a regiment, the shop-boy become a wealthy tradesman, the railway porter master of a station, he who works on the farm has no hope of more ample means—only a dismal prevision of lumbago and parish pay. Hence the exodus to the factories and to the mines."
It may be doubted whether the possession of an allotment is a sufficient panacea for the evil complained of. But it is, at any rate, a step in the right direction.
Every reader would, of course, have a right to feel bitterly aggrieved if he found no good stories in a book bearing Dean Hole's name. But no such ill-fortune awaits him here. The book is full of good things. There is, for instance, a most delightful malapropism quoted of an old gardener, who when asked his age replied that he should soon be an "octogeranium," though even this is not funnier than the anecdote in the chapter on. the wild garden, which immediately follows the account of the water-garden. The Dean tells how, when an Eton. boy MRS: asked. the difference between Naiads and Dryads; he gave it as his opinion that the Naiads were Wet Bobs, and the Dryads Dry. The following story is given to illustrate the lengths to which was carried the fashion for having everything in pairs in a garden. Lord Selkirk was walking on a terrace. in his garden at St. Mary's Isle, which had n summerhouse at either end. In one of these "Le found a bOy imprisoned for stealing apples, and in the other a son of his gardener, about the same age, looking out with a doleful countenance. Meeting the father, Lord Selkirk expressed his sorrow, supposing that the boys were accom- plices. 'Nee, nae, my lord,' said the gardener, ' my laddie's no thief, but I just put him there for symmetry." Probably not many of Dean Hole's readers can rise to the height of self-abnega- tion which he recommends with regard to fruit-trees, and allow the birds to have most of the fruit. He quotes Addison and Sir Richard Owen in support of the sacrifice, the latter answering a friend who asked why some of the cherries were not pro-: tected by nets : " They are the salaries of my orchestra, the wages of my choir." Some gardeners may fail to see what sparrows, the most impudent of all the garden thieves, have done to earn such bounty. But enough quotations have been made to show that the book is as amusing as it is useful, and in this double capacity it may be confidently added to the shelves which hold the library of the garden.
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