21 JULY 1939, Page 15

* * * * I had occasion this week to

conduct a party of these delightful Parisians round a typically English garden. They had already visited, and been suitably impressed by, the show places of South-Eastern England, but it was the quantity and quality of the smaller houses and gardens which had come to them as a revelation. Being intelligent and receptive people they had at once realised that the calculated disorder of our flower-beds was an expression of horti- cultural taste. They had seen (and they knew that they had seen) something that we achieve more quietly, and far better, than any other race on earth. They were pleased by this revelation and they pressed me to explain to them how and by what stages we had discovered the secret of garden design. * * * *