"Let the painfull Gardiner expresse never so much care and diligent endeavour; yet among the very fairest, sweetest, and freshest Flowers, as also Plants of most precious Vertue; ill savouring and stinking Weeds, fit for no use but the fire or mucke-hill, will spring and sprout up." So wrote Boccaccio nearly six hundred years ago, and the truth of his observation has not lost its savour in spite of the centuries—though I, for one, should be sorry to apply to any plant of my acquaintance the adjectives of abuse which Boccaccio so naturally uses.

Of course one tries, and must ever try, to keep the garden free from weeds, but it is a matter for congratulation that we can never entirely succeed. Probably the earliest gardening memories of most of us are associated either with weeds, or with that branch of gardening usually first delegated to children—the operation of weeding. A great deal of the pleasure of growing flowers is undoubtedly due to the difficulties which one has to combat, and gardening with no weeds to worry us, with no snails, slugs, or green fly for us to fight, would be about as insipid an occupation as that known among the provincial middle-class as "paying calls." What beauty there is in these much despised weeds! Few wall plants, for instance, surpass in general "usefulness" the little Ivy-leaved Toad-flax (Linaria Cymbalaria), which bears its dainty purple snapdragon-like flowers nearly the year through. It is a tidy little plant, too, for, as soon as its flowers have been fertilised and are beginning to fade, it bends them aside so that the seed vessels may rest in some suitable crevice where the ripened seed may safely be born. The flowers which stand out from the plant, therefore, always look fresh and attractive.

Not everyone can grow the Gentians, but certainly everyone can grow—though not all of us can exterminate—those beautiful Veronicas, the Germander Speedwell and the Field Speedwell, with their brightest of blue flowers. Merely to name the dandelion, daisy, plantain, convolvulus, dock, pheasant's eye, and even the groundsel, is to remind ourselves of the great beauty which our garden weeds possess, and of the essential place which they occupy in the mental picture of a homely garden. Yet is there one "weed"—or "good plant in the wrong place," as a weed has been well defined—more prevalent than all others, hardier than most, and as beautiful as any. No garden, no road, no wall or fence even, but grass does its best to drape and to beautify it. And if gardening has made men blind to the beauty of the grass leaf, so blind that they needs must roll and cut it for appearance's sake, then is gardening to be ranked with that spirit of vestrydom, of which Mrs Meynell says such true, sarcastic things. But gardening need have no such tendency. Rather should it tend to make its devotees observant and admiring where plant beauty is concerned. Still, with weeds, be they ever so beautiful, ever so interesting, must the gardener wage eternal war. Nature, like the artist she is, abhors bare earth as much as she abhors a vacuum, and, where she sees a piece of ground uncovered, there she sows her seeds or projects her roots. One of the best ways of keeping weeds within bounds, therefore, is to have as little earth as possible uncovered by plants, for then weeds have small chance of entry and smaller chance of development. There is a hackneyed saying to the effect that one year's seeding means seven years' weeding, and there is wisdom in it; but rare indeed must be the gardens where in some odd corner weeds do not succeed each year in ripening and scattering their seeds. As soon as a weed is seen, it should be pulled up, or Dutch-hoed off, and, if it have not a perennial root, straightway buried in the garden or used as a mulch round shrubs or herbaceous plants. In addition to its primary object, the mere pulling up of weeds, or hoeing off their heads, is of the utmost value in loosening the surface of the ground, and so checking evaporation and the conduction of heat. In fighting with weeds, garden flowers will be much assisted by deep cultivation, rich soil, and a provision of those general conditions which conduce to their health and vigour. As a rule the annual weeds are kept under with comparative ease, it usually being the perennials with spreading roots which give the real trouble. In preparing a piece of ground, every piece of such root—be it of couch grass, bindweed, or what not—should be picked out and burnt. Then, if, through several seasons, every shoot of perennial weed be pulled off directly it is seen, they will eventually be subdued or even vanquished. For weedy paths, it is no longer necessary to spend hours or days in hand-weeding with basket and knife—historically interesting though that practice is. All that is now required is to water the paths, when dry, with a solution made by boiling five ounces of powdered arsenic in a gallon of water, stirring the while, and then adding two gallons of cold water, and half a pound of soda.

Such is the fate of the man who would be a gardener. He must wage constant battle with flowers whose beauty he can but acknowledge. He must be full of zeal for the murder of plants he is bound to love and admire. It is a little like hitting a woman; and, when one sees the weed, which has been violently hurled from bed and border, patiently trying to live its humble life on wall or rubbish-heap, smiling as sweetly as it may on the "owner" of the soil, one is reminded of that pathetic—even if fictitious—story of the vivisector's dog.