Before you put in any plants you must pay some attention to the state of your soil. Even grown-ups often seem to think that earth is earth, and that any flowers will nourish in any ground. But, as a matter of fact, plants are even more various and dainty about their food than human beings; they answer as well to clever treatment, and they look as starved as slum children when they are not properly fed. Gardeners usually tell you that nearly everything will nourish in a good loam, and that it may be either natural or the result of cultivation. Soil of this kind is a mixture of clay, sand, and humus, and is easily worked. In or near London you generally get abominable soil in your garden, because the builders have dug out the good stuff and replaced it with any kind of rubbish. Everyone knows the London mixture of black, sticky clay, broken bricks and bottles, and the roots of grimy trees and shrubs. Many things will no more thrive in such a medium than a baby would on lobster salad. If you have to begin your gardening career with a builder’s rubbish-heap, you must be content to grow some of the strongest things, such as Starworts, Foxgloves, Nasturtiums, and some bulbs, and to renew them every year. Roughly speaking, soils may be divided into heavy and light—those that hold wet and those that do not. The heavy kinds are mostly clay, though pure peat retains a great deal of moisture. The light soils are gravel, limestone, and sand. If you are used to a heavy clay soil, you will envy the people who have a light sandy one; and then some day when you come to work a hungry, sandy garden, you will wish for some of the sticky soil that is not easy to handle, but which many plants love. In either case you must try to improve matters, and to do this you must first find out what your soil is. In a limestone country you need not add lime, but it would be good for clay. In Holland pure sand has been made fertile by the addition of cow manure.