Gertrude Jekyll Children and Gardens

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Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Well do I remember the time when I thought there were two kinds of people in the world - children and grown-ups, - and that the world really belonged to the children. And I think it is because I have been more or less a gardener all my life thati still feel like a child in many ways, although from the number of years I have lived I ought to know that I am quite an Old woman. But I can still - when no one is looking climb over a five-barred'gate or jump a ditch; but then I was always strong and active in my limbs, and in many ways more like a boy than a girl. This was no doubt because my place in the family came in the middle of four boys; two brothers Older and two younger. I had no girl companions, for my only sister was seven years Older, so that we were not much together. It was therefore natural that I should be more Of a boy than a girl in my ideas and activities, delighting to go Up trees, and to play cricket, and take wasps' nests after dark, and do dreadful deeds with gunpowder and all the boy sort of things. But when my brothers went to school I had to find my own amusements. There was a dear old pony Toby and the dog Crim, and we three used to wander away into the woods and heaths and along all the little lanes and by-paths Of our beautiful country.