This volume is but a collection of Notes, which, at the request of the
editor, I wrote, month by month, in 1874, for the columns of the
_Gardeners' Chronicle_.
They pretend to little technical knowledge, and are, I fear, of but
little horticultural value. They contain only some slight record of a
year's work in a garden, and of those associations which a garden is so
certain to call up.
As, however, I found that this monthly record gave pleasure to readers,
to whom both the garden and its owner were quite unknown, I printed off
some fifty copies to give to those, whom I have the happiness to number
among my friends, and for whom a garden has the same interest that it
has for me.
Four years have passed since then, and I am still asked for copies which
I cannot give.
I have at last, rather reluctantly, for there seems to me something
private and personal about the whole affair, resolved to reprint these
notes, and see if this little book can win for itself new friends on its
own account.
One difficulty, I feel, is that I am describing what happened five years
ago. But this I cannot help. To touch or alter would be to spoil the
truthfulness of all. The notes must stand absolutely as they were
written. But after all, I believe, the difficulty is only an apparent
one. The seasons, indeed, may vary--a spring may be later, a summer may
be warmer, an autumn may be more fruitful,--but the seasons themselves
remain. The same flowers come up each year, the same associations link
themselves on to the returning flowers, and the verses of the great
poets are unchanged. The details of a garden will alter, but its general
effect and aspect are the same.
Nevertheless, something has been learnt, and something remembered, since
these notes were written, and this, also communicated from time to time
to the _Gardeners' Chronicle_, I have condensed into a supplementary
chapter.
If, as I have heard from a friendly critic, there is too much _couleur
de rose_ in my descriptions, I am tempted to retort that this is a
colour not perhaps altogether inappropriate to my subject; but, be this
as it may, I have described nothing but as it really appeared to me, and
I have only wished that others should receive the same impressions as
myself.
For my very open egotism I make no apology; it was a necessity of the
plan on which I wrote.
I have added notes on the Roman Viola, and on the Sunflower of the
Classics, and have given some extracts respecting the Solanum and the
fly-catching Azalea. I have also reprinted, by the editor's kind
permission, part of an article of mine that appeared in the _Athenaeum_
on "Flowers and the Poets."