Brocket Hall is a mansion some three miles north of Hatfield, Hertfordshire, and a short distance off the Great North Road. It is one of a string of seats hereabouts which belong to Earl Cowper, but has been tenanted by Lord Mount-Stephen for some years. The house, which, as will be seen, has not much architectural pretensions, was built in the eighteenth century, but it is, to cite an old chronicle, "situate on a dry hill in a fair park well wooded and greatly timbered" through which the river Lea winds picturesquely. It is notable as having been the residence of two Prime Ministers, Lord Melbourne and Lord Palmerston. The drawing of "The Hawthorn Valley" (Plate 37) is taken from a part of the park. [Illustration: 66. THE SOUTH BORDER _From the Water-colour in the possession of the Artist._ Painted 1902.] This is one of the borders designed on the graduated doctrine as practised by Miss Jekyll in her garden at Munstead near Godalming. Here we have the colours starting at the far end in grey leaves, whites, blues, pinks, and pale yellows, towards a gorgeous centre of reds, oranges, and scarlets, the whites being formed of yuccas, the pinks of hollyhocks, the reds and yellows of gladioli, nasturtiums, African marigolds, herbaceous sunflowers, dahlias, and geraniums. Another part of the scheme is seen in the drawing which follows. [Illustration: 67. THE SOUTH BORDER _From the Water-colour in the possession of W. Edwards, Jun._ Painted 1900.] A further illustration of the same border in Miss Jekyll's garden, but painted a year or two earlier, and representing it at its farther end, where cool colours are coming into the scheme. The orange-red flowers hanging over the wall are those of the _Bignonia grandiflora_; the bushes on either side of the archway with white flowers are choisyas, and the adjoining ones are red and yellow dahlias, flanked by tritonias (red-hot pokers); the oranges in front are African marigolds (hardly reproduced sufficiently brightly), with white marguerites; the grey-leaved plant to the left is the _Cineraria maritima_. Miss Jekyll does not entirely keep to her arrangement of masses of colour; whilst, as an artist, she affects rich masses of colour, she is not above experimenting by breaking in varieties. [Illustration: 68. STUDY OF LEEKS _From the Water-colour in the possession of the Artist._ Painted 1902.] I like the leeke above all herbes and flowers, When first we wore the same the field was ours. The Leeke is White and Greene, whereby is ment That Britaines are both stout and eminent; Next to the Lion and the Unicorn, The Leeke's the fairest emblym that is worne.