A POOR MAN’S HOUSE FRONT IN MILLWALL
Miss Jekyll, in Home and Garden, tells the prettiest story I know of plants given to the poor. A factory lad in one of the great northern manufacturing towns had advertised in a mechanical paper that he wanted a tiny garden in a window-box; he knew nothing—would somebody help him with advice? That some one was Gertrude Jekyll. Little plants of mossy and silvery Saxifrages and a few small bulbs were sent him, also some stones, for this was to be a rock-garden. It had two hills of different heights, with rocky tops, and a longish valley, with a sunny and a shady side, all in a box that measured three feet by ten inches!
Imagine the delight of the factory child when he saw the milk-white of the modest Snowdrop and the brilliant blue of the early Squill as they came up, jewel bright, in the grey, soot-laden atmosphere of the smoky town! The boy’s happy letters showed that, in his childish way, he shared the rapture of the poet.
“The simplest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”
CHAPTER VII
THE BEGINNER
“When spring unlocks the flowers.”
Now and again we meet with beginners who really seem hardly to know one end of a plant from another. Always buying their flowers in bunches, they have no idea how they look when growing, and seeing flowers placed side by side that have been sent from the widest different zones and climates, they are not even very sure which of them may be claimed as English grown. Shiploads of flowers from warmer latitudes keep London and other large towns far in advance of the seasons as seen in country districts, and it is misleading. At last some enterprising spirit begins to long for the pleasure of the growing plant. It is a trial to be always buying and bringing home fresh flowering plants only to see them die off in their new quarters (for this is what they generally do), so a balcony or window-box is started.