autumn, when its withered haulm helps out the well-remembered
woodland scent, or in spring, when it is thrusting its volutes
through last year's waste. But all this is nothing to a garden, and
is not to be got out of it; and if you try it you will take away
from it all possible romance, the romance of a garden.

The same thing may be said about many plants, which are curiosities
only, which Nature meant to be grotesque, not beautiful, and which
are generally the growth of hot countries, where things sprout over
quick and rank. Take note that the strangest of these come from the
jungle and the tropical waste, from places where man is not at home,
but is an intruder, an enemy. Go to a botanical garden and look at
them, and think of those strange places to your heart's content.
But don't set them to starve in your smoke-drenched scrap of ground
amongst the bricks, for they will be no ornament to it.

As to colour in gardens. Flowers in masses are mighty strong
colour, and if not used with a great deal of caution are very
destructive to pleasure in gardening. On the whole, I think the
best and safest plan is to mix up your flowers, and rather eschew
great masses of colour--in combination I mean. But there are some
flowers (inventions of men, i.e. florists) which are bad colour
altogether, and not to be used at all. Scarlet geraniums, for
instance, or the yellow calceolaria, which indeed are not uncommonly
grown together profusely, in order, I suppose, to show that even
flowers can be thoroughly ugly.

Another thing also much too commonly seen is an aberration of the
human mind, which otherwise I should have been ashamed to warn you
of. It is technically called carpet-gardening. Need I explain it