Not the least delightful part, in my opinion, of the growing knowledge of gardening is the appreciative visiting of the gardens of others. On first going into a garden one knows by instinct, as a hound scents the fox, if it is going to be interesting or not. One's eyes are sharp, and a joyful glow of satisfaction comes over one on seeing something not by any means necessarily new, but unknown to oneself. When looking through old books or modern catalogues, one feels one has nothing in one's garden, but I must confess that visiting other people's gardens very often makes me feel I really have a very fair collection. A notebook is a most important companion on gardening expeditions. I use metallic paper, to ensure a permanent record, and an ordinary pencil. I write the date and name of the place, then jot down the names of plants and general observations. I have also kept a kind of gardening journal for many years, making notes three or four times in the month, and on the opposite page I keep lists of any plants I buy or bring home from friends, with the date; noting the deaths the following year is instructive. I have lately had a rain-gauge given me. This is a great interest and amusement, especially where rain-water is always in demand and often running short. I did not know the importance of rain-water when first we came to live here; and though we have lots of roofing, we are not sufficiently provided with underground tanks. Our small ones are supplemented now as much as possible by petroleum barrels sunk into the ground, and the water-shoot from the roof allowed to pour into them. You can connect this first barrel with others by a little piece of lead piping, and so increase the storage.

For those who have not got very good memories for the names of plants, I strongly recommend them, if they can draw, to make a little coloured sketch, however small, on the page of a gardening book next the name of the plant. This will be found a great help to the memory; I began gardening so late in life that I had to get all the help I could. I have lately been visiting what I call intelligent gardens, and will make a few remarks about them. In one place where Roses grow well I saw a beautiful specimen of La Marque Rose-one of the most satisfactory Roses for a wall. Everyone ought to try and grow it who has room and a fairly good Rose soil. The long flowering branches were cut a yard or more in length. At the end of each branch was a beautiful bunch of pure, cream-white Roses, seven or eight in number, with buds in between, and pale, healthy, green leaves down the stem. Two such branches in a narrow-necked vase, bronze or blue or dark green, are an ornament to which nothing can be added for any room, be it in a cottage or a palace. As a decoration for a large dinner-table, nothing can be better than these Roses when they are in their prime, which, unfortunately, is but for a very short time.

In the old days of bedding-out, lawns used to be cut up into beds and patterns. Now the fashion has changed, and bedding-out has become so generally condemned that most people have levelled and turfed-over the rounds, stars, crescents, and oblongs that used to enliven their lawns for a short time, at any rate, every autumn. As a result of this reaction, there are now an immense number of large, dull lawns, which as a rule slope slightly away from the house, and often to the south. They are wet in rain, and dry and brown in hot weather. They have their weekly shave with the mowing-machine, and lie baking in the sunshine. The poor plants, which would flower and do well in the open, are planted at the edges of the shrubberies, where-in a light soil, at any rate-they are robbed and starved into ugliness and failure by their stronger neighbours.

There are several ways of breaking up lawns. One is by turning the lawns into grass paths, along which the machine runs easily, and making all the rest into open, informally shaped beds. These can be planted in every kind of way-in bold masses of one thing alone, or at most in mixtures of two, such as Roses and Violas; Azaleas and Lilies; Carnations and more Violas, or mossy Saxifrages; Campanulas in succession, tall and lowgrowing; a bold group of Bamboos and Bocconia cordata; or simply with a selection of a few low-growing shrubs; and so on ad infinitum. Another way, and one that finds small favour with gardeners, and with considerable reason, because of the trouble of turning the mowing-machine round the plants, is to break up the lawn with sunshine-loving specimen plants-Mulberries, Savins, Sumachs, clumps of creeping Ayrshire Roses and Honeysuckles, poles covered with claret-coloured Vines, Clematis, etc. Yet another way is to have a double pergola running all round the lawn in a square, or only down both sides, with a grass path, broad and stately, underneath the pergola. This can be made of stone or brick, oak-trees or fir-poles; or, if wanted very light, of Japanese large Bamboos-to be got now in London, I believe. These Bamboos look best if two, three, or five are blocked together unequally, with different-sized openings in between, and used as supports for fruit-trees and flowering shrubs of all kinds. As these plants grow, bamboos and wires have to be put across the top to support the creepers. In the middle is a large square of grass; the openings are left turfed, but where the supports are put into the ground a narrow bed must be made for the plants. This enables them to be manured, chalked, watered, and generally cared for. I now come to what is, in my idea, by far the most enchanting plan for breaking up a lawn, which is to sink a small Dutch garden in the middle of it. The size of the Dutch garden must, of course, be in proportion to that of the lawn. If the proportion cannot be kept, it would be better to leave it alone. It should have a redbrick wall all round it, and be oblong or square, as suits the situation. The entrances to it are by brick steps, one in the middle of each of the four sides. The height of the wall is about three feet from the ground on the outside, and five feet on the inside. Along these walls, on the inside, are rather wide beds, bordered by paths made of rows of large, square red tiles, laid flat and not quite joining, so that tiny alpines and mosses may grow in between them at their own sweet will. If preferred, this narrow path can be made of bricks or broken paving-stones. The object of this path, besides the convenience of standing dry to pick the flowers or weed the beds, is that the front of the bed can be planted in groups, not in rows, with all sorts of low-growing things:-Alyssums, Aubrietias, Forget-me-nots, Pinks of all kinds, Saxifrages, and mosses. On the side shaded by the wall and facing north small ferns, Campanulas, and shade-loving plants are the only ones that will do well. Primroses, Auriculas, and the spring-flowering bulbs and Irises do best on the side facing east; and the summer and autumn plants like to face west and north, as they weary of the hot sun all the summer through. All the year round this little garden can be kept a pleasure and a joy by a little management, and by planting and replanting from the greenhouse, the seed-beds, or the reserve garden. The wall looks best if entirely planted with Tea-roses. As they grow, they send up long waving branches, which beautifully break the hard line of the wall. The middle of the walled garden is grass, and the mowing machine can never cut or injure the plants, feather forward as they will on to the tiled path between the beds and the grass. In the centre there can be a sundial on a square base; or, if you have water laid on, a small square or oblong cement tank let into the ground, quite level with the grass, as a fountain and to be handy for watering. All day long the water in the tank is warmed by the sunshine. This kind of fountain is an enormous improvement, I think, to small suburban gardens, and it is prettier oblong than square. The fountain must be made of cement and six or eight feet deep. If the garden slopes at all, the overflow from the fountain can be guided by small watercourses on to different beds. I have pockets of cement made at irregular intervals at the edges of the fountain to hold water-plants and such things, which then appear reflected on the surface of the water, not as they grow against a dark shrub or a group of Italian Canes or Bamboos, but against the blue sky above them-an endless pleasure to those who notice such things. A piece of water, however small, and the sound of water falling from a small fountain, or even from a raised tap if the tank is near a wall, is such an added enjoyment to life on a hot summer's day, not to mention the infinite superiority for watering of having water that has been exposed to the sun and air. If not artificially fed, gold-fish live and breed healthily in these tanks.