108 BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



ARTICLE III. 



NOTES OF A WILD GARDEN. 



By G. U. Hay. 



(Read before the Society, December 7th, 1897.) 



About ten years ago the idea occurred to me of planting a wild 

 garden in which should be shown, as far as the conditions would war- 

 rant, the peculiarities and extent of the flora of New Brunswick. The 

 garden plot covers an extent of nearly two acres and is well adapted 

 for the purpose intended. It is situated about eleven miles from the 

 city, on a broken piece of ground overlooking the St. John river. In 

 one corner is a meadow, made up of alluvial deposit brought from the 

 neighboring hills, and adapted for plants usually found on intervales. 

 Through this meadow flows a small stream fed by springs on the hills 

 which lie to the westward. The idea of planting a native arboretum 

 was first suggested by finding in this meadow a group of small trees 

 and shrubs eight in number, forming a pretty little arbor on the bank 

 of the curving stream. The plants consisted of the cedar, the white 

 and yellow birch, American ash or rowan-tree, water alder, mountain 

 maple, balsam fir and black spruce. One could stand in the centre of 

 this arbor and touch one-tenth of all our forest trees and shrubs. 

 When nature had made such a beginning it was surely a broad hint 

 for me to do the rest. 



When the remainder of the two acre plot came to be explored, 

 possibilities were found to exist for something more than an arboretum; 

 and the idea of a wild garden gradually came, which might include 

 most of our flowering plants, all our native ferns, and perhaps in time 

 a representative gathering of our mosses, lichens and fungi. Rising 

 from the meadow toward the south, within the bounds of the plot, is 

 a hill whose slope is covered with a young but quite ample growth of 

 spruce, fir, birch, maple, etc., the deciduous trees largely prevailing, 

 and giving to the soil each yeai an abundant supply of leaf mould. 

 Half way up this hill, in the centre of the grove, is a depression which 



