amily where the
baby is grown up. Talk about babies. Ask if the baby had a tin bath with
a lid to it, the kind that its things are packed in when it goes to the
seaside in the summer. Ask further if that bath is still in existence.
If it is, then make the family give you the bath. It is to serve as the
reservoir for your fountain and is essential.

You proceed to the second step. In deciding where you would put your
fountain, you will remember of course that fountains always look best
among big trees with a green background. You now fix the disused bath
firmly in the tree twenty feet or so from the ground, in such a position
that it is secluded by foliage from the gaze of the curious and
impertinent. The chestnut tree seems to have been specially designed by
nature for this purpose.

Your third step would be to dig out the basin of the fountain. I chose a
spot under the trees mid ferns and laurels. I bought from a stone-yard a
cartload of material, half of it broken flat paving-stone and half of it
chunks, and I may add incidentally that I paid too much for it. I paved
the bottom of the basin with flat stone and concrete, leaving a space
for the jet of the fountain to come up in the middle. I used the flat
stone also for the border round the margin of the basin. At the back of
the fountain I built up the chunks to the height of six feet or so,
putting in plenty of earth with them. I have golden and silver ivies
climbing over the stones, and I have planted there anything which I
thought would grow.

The reservoir being in its place and the basin constructed, the next
step is to connect them. This is done by a compo pipe with a
surreptitious tap in it.

And after that you fill the bath with the garden hose and turn the tap.
As a rule nothing happens the first time, because there is air in the
pipe; but you can put the garden syringe to the fine nozzle in which the
compo pipe terminates, and draw out the air. My own fountain will play
for six hours continuously; and then when no one is looking one must
fill up the bath reservoir again.

It is really extraordinary how gardening turns decent, God-fearing men
into braggarts. I have said that I did this myself. I did design it. I
did direct the work, and to some extent assist in it; but can I fix
compo pipes on to holes in baths, or fine nozzles on to compo pipes? Can
I fit taps? Can I manipulate stone and concrete? Certainly not.

It is very useful to know a man who ca