Tim Conley's "Ideal"

In those years, the curious would cross great distances and incur no small expenses to get within view of Lord Lockington’s estate, and thereafter to wheedle any sort of invitation to visit, all in hopes of seeing his garden. There were many stories of its lustre and exquisite variety. Perennials were said to waltz with exotics, and with each turn in the path new fragrances and colours revealed themselves. Yet on the rare occasion when someone, by scheme or simply good fortune, managed to tour the grounds, the garden’s beauty aroused admiration only initially, then disappointment, and finally a sort of satisfaction, this last the result of no one really wanting to believe that the garden could be as fantastical as they had heard and imagined, and here at last they found it was only a garden after all, with certain inevitable and reassuring limitations.

“This is truly a splendid garden, my lord,” these visitors would say.

“It is,” Lord Lockington would reply, according to some accounts with a hint of amusement somewhere in the corner of his eye or mouth, and according to others with no expression whatsoever. “It is,” he would agree, “but it is not the garden.”

No one has satisfactorily explained just what he meant by this, but in his final years he was confined to an asylum for the incurably mad.