It is a poor garden that does not show Roses in June, and in the early part of the month too. Nothing is more amazing, and at the same time more delightful, than the way in which Roses bound into bloom in June after a slow drag through a cold spring. I sometimes think that Nature, who often treats us harshly with cold winds throughout April and May, which hold vegetation back and give the whole garden a pinched look - that this same domineering spirit provides compensation in an unusual acceleration of speed when the weather-brake is removed. Vegetation seems to spring as a motor does when an extra whiff of gas is given. It is, of course, a fact that plants in Arctic regions grow more rapidly, when once they are started, than plants in the south. This has been attributed by scientists to the effect of electric discharges, but the vegetable forcer in this country notices that plants which have been checked (might I not say rested?) by hard frost grow faster, when subjected to heat, than others which have never had to feel the pinch of winter.

It is disappointing to see plants held up by hard weather in spring, but one feels that it is almost worth it when one sees with what gusto they go ahead directly they are released. They are as full of life and joy as a dog taken off the chain.

June is perhaps the most enjoyable month of the whole year in the garden. Those who have mowing under a hot sun in view will possibly demur to the suggestion that the real hard work of the year has been done; but at least the preparatory work has been completed. And mowing is not laborious in the same way as digging and path-making. The modern mower runs as easily as an aeroplane, and the cut grass has a delicious smell. The work is really only hard when the amateur wills that it shall be so by choosing an inferior machine, and using it in an unclean, unoiled state.

There is one thing that I will admit - nay, with a definite object in view, gladly affirm - namely, that tasks multiply rapidly in the garden in summer. Practically all the digging, manuring, turfing, planting, and sowing have been done, and yet we are busier than ever. Some plants want watering, others staking, and others thinning. Strawberries need mulching, Gooseberries netting, early Peas gathering, climbing Roses tying, paths rolling after rain, and Grass edges trimming after the completion of the mowing. A score of things, not one of which we might think of in walking through a neighbour's garden, want doing in our own. And the apparently minor tasks sometimes take up the most time. For instance, the pricking-out of a bedful of young Cauliflowers in a distant corner of the garden may pass unoticed by everybody except the person who does the work, and yet it may have taken two hours out of a busy day.

The object which I referred to in the preceding paragraph is that of suggesting to employers of garden labour that consideration is urgently called for in the busy days of summer. A gardener should not be called away to clean windows, or wash down a motor car, or pluck a fowl, and then be sharply admonished if the grass gets too long before it is cut. A man with half an acre or more of garden, and a couple of glass houses, will not have much time for extraneous tasks in summer. Gardeners are not naturally grumpy men, but they grow tetchy when they are overworked and misunderstood.

I come back to my point, that work in the summer is not generally so laborious as that of winter. There is so much more to beguile it in the way of pleasant sights and sweet smells that such physical strain as there is is not noticed. Is a man likely to groan at having to carry water to Sweet Peas, when he can almost see the plants grow under his eyes, and when every day finds more and more colour in the buds? Will he consider it irksome to draw a roller over the lawn when the Grass is verdant and buoyant? Will he grumble at having to train a Rose when the pillars are being rapidly covered with a mantle of flowers?

People who have gardens should live the open-air life to the full in June. If they have writing to do, let them take it into the garden. Let them work, eat, read - yes, even sleep there. The ingenious cycle campers have devised tents of extraordinary lightness and grace.

They have invented bedsteads, mattresses, blankets, sheets, and pyjamas all combined in one or two articles, which they can as good as stow away in their waistcoat pockets. Why should not we who make beautiful gardens, filling them with lovely sights and delicious odours, sleep in them? Think of breathing fresh, invigorating air at night just as we breathe it throughout the day. Night air is every whit as good as day air- if anything, better. And we are not obliged to allow damp to penetrate our bones, and give us rheumatism for life, just because we decline to sleep between brick walls.