Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

Autumn effects need never be thought of in London at all. When people come back to the West End, after the holidays, it is nearly winter. The poor leaves, choked and smothered in soot, have fallen sadly and greyly to the ground, leaving all their autumn glory to their more fortunate country brethren ; and all can be swept clean and tidy before anyone comes back. Amongst deciduous shrubs all the ordinary common ones do very well, and only want attention and pruning, and pulling-off of suckers, as the same plants require in the country. Privets, being half-deciduous, do very well also. Bamboos are useless, as they are never in full beauty, even in th& country, till the autumn and winter. In all small gardens it is my advice to avoid turf, and especially in London, It never looks well, and is expensive and troublesome to maintain, which is one reason the day-gardener likes it. Have as wide a border all round the wall as you can afford, and some red gravel or a bricked or tiled square in the middle of the garden to sit on. o2 196 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN Have a sunk tub, in the sun, under a tap, from which to fill a watering-pot, to water more delicate things ; and do not hose too much, especially if your soil is damp, except in very warm weather. On the walls have Hibes sanguineum and Forsythias, as they flower very early. Vines and Fig-trees, white Jasmine, and Jasminum nudi- florum, all do well in London. Wherever there is room on the walls facing south put the deciduous Magnolias (see ' English Flower Garden '). The Magnolia grandi- jlora has such polished and very shiny leaves ; it grows very well near London. I remember some very fine plants of the same that used to grow in gardens at Walham Green and Fulham, where in my youth people gave what are now called garden-parties and used then to be called ' Breakfasts ' — why, I do not know, as they never began till three o'clock in the afternoon. Perhaps the French refugees brought in the fashion of such enter- tainments, full of the recollections of the dejeune champetre of Louis XV. and Louis XVI. and their Courts. I know a Magnolia in Addison Eoad — I think it must be a M. conspicua — that, though crowded up and appa- rently neglected, flowers most beautifully every spring, nearly as well as the famous one which is such a marked ornament every year in the Champs Elys6es. A Forsythia at the corner of Marlborough House garden in the early spring has often excited my admiration. I quote these examples to show that plants will grow and flower in London still, if well chosen and cared for. For the borders, I recommend no edging ; it is ex- pensive and useless. The gravel is enough ; and it is, I think, prettier to disguise the fact of a line than to accentuate it. Plant what you have in bold clumps — the tall plants, of course, at the back ; but rather in waves of height, with bays of the front low-growing things, running back towards and under the wall. Anything OCTOBER 197