A Garden Catalogue
The most interesting and :original experiment in rural arts and crafts that I know is being tried out at Dartington Hall in Devon. Research has been, and is being made into eight or ten rural industries. They include gardens of a commercial sort ; and it is now decided that the, experimental stage is over. The chrysalis after ten more or less secretive years has
come out into the open. A peculiar fame had already been• won in the designing of rock gardens owing to a succession of championships at the Chelsea Show. This department of the Dartington Estate (which owes its origin to American idealism) has just produced a Sort2tif catalogue raisonne that is more or less unique in garden literature. COrriinander King-Hall, who writes a little preface, claims that it will make garden history. It certainly constitutes. an admirable book referenceas well as a catalogue. If you want to know the leading attributes of any variety of any bush : ' its colour. in flower or leaf, its height, its flowering period, its fitness fOr a particular site or soil, thereis all the information in tabulated epitome, readable
fi
at. a glance. The flower catalogues of the greater firms., such asCarters and Sutton, are gorgeous by reason Of their coloured plates, and have much information that. may be called per- manent. They, too, are books of reference that one shrinks from destroying ; .but thii ingenious and weighty volume (A Garden Catalogue. 2s. Dartington Hall, Ltd., Totne4, Devon) is a navel and very welcome union of coMinerce,and art, and perhaps One may add, of science.
W. 13E:Am
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