This is the story of a Japanese garden made by one of the authors when she was in her London home, and had to grow all her plants in a window-box and in a room. The Japanese, as you probably know, think that size in a garden does not matter, provided that everything is in proportion, and they produce the most wonderful effects of landscape gardening in a small space. The one in the room was copied as nearly as possible from a photograph of a real one. To begin with, a zinc tray was made, five feet long, two feet wide, and four inches deep. At one end a hill was arranged of good-sized stones bedded in earth. Halfway up the hill grew a dwarf Japanese Fir-tree. It was really in a pot, but the pot was hidden by Moss and stones. On the other side of the hill, a little lower down, there was an Orange-tree, covered with small red oranges. These are to be had at any good flower shop for five shillings. The Orange-tree lasted a year with care, but the Fir-tree lasted five years in London, and is still alive in a West Country garden. Down the centre of the hill a staircase was made of small, flat stones wedged into the earth, and beside this several sorts of tiny hardy Ferns grew. At the base of the hill a good many plants in pots were arranged to look as natural as possible, but all the pots were bedded in earth and covered with Moss. Some paths were arranged with flat stones, and one of them led to the lake. This was made of a green earthenware dish eighteen inches long and an inch and a half deep. Ferns hung over its edge, and one or two hardy water-plants grew on its surface, while over a corner of it there was a wooden bridge. At the back of the lake there was a tall Umbrella Fern that looked like a Bamboo. Stones were artfully arranged so as to break the straight lines of the dish, and in the spring bulbs grown in very small pots were flowering near it. Some of the miniature Daffodils do well for such a purpose, and so do Crocuses, Snowdrops, and Squills. The dwarf Japanese trees you need for such a garden are rather expensive, but if you do not mind that you can get many beautiful kinds. Any of the Japanese curio dealers would sell little china temples, houses, lanterns, and figures that add to the quaint charm of a garden made in this way. If you please, you may call it artificial, but that is a word you may apply to any form of gardening. When you have made your Japanese garden with great skill and patience, and kept it in good order by unfailing care and attention, you will be rather vexed if other people who cannot keep a Fern alive exclaim: ‘Very curious, certainly, but quite artificial.’ Of course you will smile politely and say nothing, but in your mind there will be some lines from Shakespeare’s ‘Winter’s Tale’ which will comfort and support you. They come in that scene where Perdita says so many beautiful things about the flowers in her garden—when she talks of the Marigold that goes to bed with the sun and