Yesterday Loki’s family motored energetically some fifty miles and back to a garden party near London.

A wonderful house with wonderful lawns and gardens—one feels that the hideous tide of brick and mortar must inevitably sweep over and destroy it before another generation comes and goes, so that there is a kind of pathos in its very beauty.

Out of the unlovely mean streets along which the tram-line runs its abominable way, one turns off into the cool country road. The long avenue is bordered by wide fields where, as we passed yesterday, the new-mown grass was lying in silver furrows. The country is quite flat; but the richness of the green, the incidents of lake and timber, give it a placid English fairness of its own.

The Lady of Villino Loki went with a keen eye to garden hints, and her first thrill was a Honeysuckle screen in the little garden of the second lodge. Such a Honeysuckle screen! It had once, she supposes, been an arch, for it rose to a kind of gable peak in the centre, but it was filled in either by design or natural luxuriance till it was a complete mass of bloom, a solid wall of blossom. Never had she beheld such a thing before. She wants Honeysuckle at the Villino, as she said already, and she is fired with fresh enthusiasm. Why should she not have a hedge of Honeysuckle, not too far from the house itself? It is settled. She will buy fifty in November and try.

The weather, which had been misty, thundery and unpromising, cleared just upon our arrival at the great “Adam” house. The lawns were in their perfection, the shade of the Cedars was cut out on the sun-golden turf, the massed flowers were vivid against their cunningly devised backgrounds. Naturally Villino Loki, even in its wildest dreams, cannot emulate this great and carefully cherished place; but one can find practical suggestions here and there. We cannot mass rare and golden-hued Maples over a broad band of yellow Calceolarias anywhere on our terraced lawns; but it is very instructive to see the management of certain herbaceous borders, where three or four large pillars of Rambler Roses alternate with mauve and silver-leaved Japanese Maples at the back; the foreground being of the usual herbaceous order.

We had no idea that the dwarf bright yellow Evening Primroses would look so well grouped together. And Nemesia, “Heavenly Blue,” has become the one annual our souls long for: blue flowers are all too rare.

Everything was most kindly labelled. We do not know if it is possible to obtain any seedlings this time of year; but certainly, next year, this adorable little plant, Nemesia, with its most exquisite turquoise blue colourings and its splendid efflorescence, shall enter largely into our schemes. In between the Nemesia, bushes of Campanula Persicifolia rose with cool restrained tones; the contrast was one to be copied also.

Another not impossible example was a Rose screen, starting with a background of close growing Ramblers, some ten or twelve feet high, supplemented midway by some of the larger Bush Roses and running down to the edge of the turf in front with pegged-down Teas; so that, to the very top, it was one mass of varied bloom. We do not see any reason why such an effect should not be copied, even in a small garden.

The standard Scarlet Geraniums we must admire from a respectful distance. They are as much beyond our humble resources as the standard Heliotrope we so much admired a year ago in a millionaire’s huge grounds not very far from us. These last rose out of a bed of mauve Violas. The ambitious soul of the mistress of the Villino hungered to copy it; but she knew that hunger would never be assuaged.

We have had a frightful disappointment in the “Miss Wilmott” Verbenas. For two summers it has been the same story. Last year they came up “all colours,” though purchased from a well-known firm! This year, to make quite sure, we ordered seedlings to be specially grown for us from a local nursery. The wretch has sent a collection of measly little starveling things which cannot be expected to do anything for weeks and weeks. Of course they should not have been accepted; but the deed was done in our absence. We are much inclined to have the beds cleared, and Heliotrope or rose-coloured Ivy-leaf Geraniums put in instead. It is too late for anything else. Gardeners are so tiresome! They are as bad as cooks, who will accept with perfect equanimity, fish ready to illustrate the proverb and game prepared to walk to its own funeral, and then say that “they thought it was ‘a bit high’ perhaps, but they weren’t quite sure!”

We have forced for the house several plants of Canterbury Bells, glorious purple and white, which have grown to an extraordinary size and fill the Compton pots on the landing in very decorative fashion.

The front landing and stairs are wondrous pretty in the Villino: and the colour scheme—Tangerine yellow for the curtains and grey for the carpet—somehow suits the little place, with its Roman air. In the round bow window there is a large copy of the Samothraki Nike on a white stand; and in front of her we place flower-pots all the year round—generally Orange trees in the winter, with which we are successful.

Alas! we leave the little Paradise to-morrow! However, we are still in such an intermediary stage that we mind less than when we lost all the glories of the Azaleas. For anyone of an impatient disposition, this time of the first setting out of the bedding plants is a trying ordeal. We are going this afternoon on a surreptitious round with “plantoids” to which Adam objects, but in the virtues of which we are believers.

The longer we labour at garden experiences, the more it is borne in upon us that ambitiousness is to be avoided. No amateurs—however splendid their visions may be—should attempt “Wild Gardens,” or “Bog Gardens” on their own unaided efforts. This does not refer to the flinging of wild-flower seeds in woodland glades, but to the digging up of harmless and unobtrusive patches of field and bank for the insertion of seedlings, which apparently will never be at home in that particular aspect and soil. The worst of it is that the energetic workers are so ensnared by the mental vision that they very often fail to perceive the paltriness of the material result.

“We had to have the meadow mown and to dig it up, just along there,” said an energetic gardening neighbour to us the other day, pointing out with pride a dreadful stretch of raw and muddy earth that lay meaninglessly along the lush field. “And we think the things will do now.”

The things—poor little sprigs of white Violas, and other most unadaptable garden children—were looking very ill and faint at long distances from each other. And in any case, even if they were eventually to flourish, the meadow was quite beautiful enough in itself and needed no such adornment. But we had not the heart to tell her so. We said, “How nice that will be,” but took the lesson to ourselves.

A visit to the Horticultural Show at Holland House—even the humblest gardener can take away lessons from these displays of lavish beauty. We wonder whether it would be possible for us to have a pool anywhere upon our sandy height. And, if so, why should we not build rough rock-work round it on one side; fill it with the cool misty mauve of the Nipeta, the cool pale yellow spires of the Dwarf Mulleins, and the faint pinks of SpirÆa; and against this background, walled about by a bank of the mysterious Iris “Morning Mist,” let a little slender lead statue rise out of the water? Coolness and mystery! Shall we ever encompass that delightful effect?... The flat flagged paths on the other side of the water should be bordered by Iris; and they should dip down into the pool itself, where just two or three Water Lilies should rock their gold-centred cups. Oh, dear! If we had sufficient money how beautiful we could make our corner of the earth!

Oh, and the Clematis!—It was a shock to find that we had to pay seven and sixpence each to go in, but it was worth it, for we have plunged to the extent of a dozen adorable Clematis from the very fountain head—if one can so strain the poor English language—of Clematis culture itself.

And the Roses! “Coronation,” a new bright scarlet climbing Wichuriana; TausendschÖn and Blush Rambler, old favourites, but so beautiful! There were two or three pillars of unnamed seedlings, exquisite apple-blossom beauties, which we longed to purchase, but which were not yet in the market. A firmer, richer apple-blossom best describes the bloom of the new discovery.

Quite beyond our pockets, but most attractive, were the standard Ivies, golden and variegated, fifteen years old ... at the modest charge of six guineas each! Could we ever wait fifteen years to see such developments? After all, why not? The grower assured us they were perfectly hardy, and more they were cut the better. They would look charming on the terrace. Such balls of gold!

Lilies at the top of a rock-garden or at the top of a rough wall have a most charming effect.

We have invested in three and sixpence worth of new fertiliser guaranteed to “produce an appearance like dark green Utrecht velvet in ten days on the roughest lawn.”

“Would you like your lawn to look like that, Madam?” asked the red headed youth in charge of squares that didn’t look in the least like real grass, but a kind of artificial compound as above mentioned.

“Very much!” said one of us, who was struck by the unnatural hue and smoothness of the exhibit.—“Do mind the sun on your head!” she added parenthetically to the delicate member of our party, who is always on her mind. “Oh, pray Madam, do not trouble to shade me,” said the red-haired youth modestly. “I am quite all right, I assure you.”

We had a vision of Loki’s Ma-Ma in her quaint Directoire dress, all striped black-and-cream chiffon and dim orange, with her absurd little Directoire tulle hat and its one coquettish rose absurd but not unbecoming spending the rest of the afternoon in sudden philanthropic frenzy, shading the red-haired youth from the July sunshine, while he volubly touted for orders for patent fertilisers! Innately polite, we explained. He was not in the least abashed.

“I do feel it very hot,” he remarked simply.