Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

Eobinson's books, the ' English Flower Garden ' will always remain his masterpiece ; and I repeat here, what I said in January, that no modern gardener can get on without it. Every village club should have it, as well as his first-rate little halfpenny paper, ' Cottage Gardening,' which has many useful things in it besides gardening. Anyone who can remember the gardening of the last thirty years will have no difficulty in recognising all that NOVEMBER 235 we owe to Mr. Eobinson. His untiring energy, the pains he has taken to bring his books up to the highest and most complete standard of useful knowledge and reference, his newspapers (the coloured illustrations of which come nearer the excellence of the old coloured engravings than those in any other modern periodical), and, above all, the true taste and knowledge he has brought to bear on English gardening are influencing the whole of Europe, America, and our colonies; for he has headed the movement in the right direction, teaching the true principles of the laying-out of gardens and the preservation and cultivation of plants and flowers. I have (bound) a great many years' numbers of ' The Garden ' newspaper. To look over them is endlessly interesting and suggestive, though it is apt to be dis- couraging, as so many plants are mentioned that we have not got and would like to have. 1872. ' Flowers and Gardens,' by Forbes Watson. This is the only break I make in my resolve to mention no book not in my possession. My reasons for doing so are that it has long been out of print, and that I want to make a short extract from it. So far as I know, this was the first of a long series of books — not so much practical gardening books, as books about the garden as a whole and the way in which the grouping and growing of plants affect the individual writer. An attractive, suggestive, and pathetic little book, written by a sick man to beguile days he knew to be his last. Mr. Watson was perhaps the last of the men who combined the three callings of doctor, botanist, and gardener. What he writes is much in advance of the feeling of the day, and it is full of what we now think quite the right tone about gardening. In the following quotation he expresses better than I can do it what I want to say. He begins : ' Solon declared that to 236 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN be the best of Governments in which an injury done to the meanest subject is an insult to the whole community. ' This is pretty much the law of a garden. ' Nothing is more objectionable than the manner in which the common plants are often treated to make way for the grandees. Bulbs taken up before they are ready, and dwarfed for next season in consequence ; small trees or shrubs transplanted carelessly, and thrust in wher- ever they will do no harm, because a little too good to throw away, and not quite good enough to deserve just treatment; and many other plants neglected, over- shadowed, or in some way stinted of their due, as not being worth much trouble. At times, even worse than this, we see murderous digging and slashing amongst plants in their period of growth. This is not a healthy process for the mind. Whatever is unfairly treated is better altogether away, since we can view it with no hearty relish. And this injustice to the least is felt inevitably in a measure by all, for it affects the spirit of the place.