Even the formal borders of the walks are of old porous stone, which takes the weather-staining so beautifully, and are carved in endless variety.

Now that the gardens have been so long neglected or left in abeyance, the green staining has become perfect.
Though the stone-work is itself intact, it has all the picturesque effect of the wear and ruin wrought by many centuries.

I am having it kept for you just as it is, except that I have had the weeds and undergrowth cleared away so that its beauties might be visible.
But it is not merely the architect work of the garden that is so beautiful, nor is the assembling there of the manifold wealth of floral beauty--there is the beauty that Nature creates by the hand of her servant, Time.

You see, Aunt Janet, how the beautiful garden inspires a danger-hardened old tramp like me to high-grade sentiments of poetic fancy! Not only have limestone and sandstone, and even marble, grown green in time, but even the shrubs planted and then neglected have developed new kinds of beauty of their own.

In some far-distant time some master-gardener of the Vissarions has tried to realize an idea--that of tiny plants that would grow just a little higher than the flowers, so that the effect of an uneven floral surface would be achieved without any hiding of anything in the garden seen from anywhere.