154 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 
CHAPTER VIII 
The Big Bog and its Lilies 
Tue denizens of the bog-garden, large and small, have, 
as a rule, one distinguishing tendency which sets them 
far apart from the inhabitants of rock and crevice. For 
their habit is, either not to thrive at all, or else to prosper 
so outrageously that they eat you out of house and home. 
And this second alternative, fortunately, is that usually 
chosen by bog-plants, with the result that the bog-garden 
is one of the enthusiast’s easiest domains—giving him the 
maximum of joy and glory, with the minimum of pain 
and worry. Indeed, among the larger bog-plants there 
are hardly any that can fairly be called difficult or ill- 
tempered, but a large and opulent generosity of growth 
is their prevailing characteristic. 
In the first place, about the building of the bog-garden. 
The prime, dominant, inevitable, necessity of the bog- 
garden is the most perfect drainage. For, the more 
moisture a plant requires, the more imperiously does it 
require that the moisture shall drain away and be renewed 
incessantly. It is a fatal error to imagine that because a 
plant enjoys growing with its feet in water, and its fibres 
a-soak with perpetual wet, that therefore it cannot need 
drainage. ‘Too often the error is made, and the bog- 
garden, built to retain the moisture, becomes a slough of 
soured and soggy mud, in which the roots of all but the 
most rampageous weeds turn sick and die. Drainage, 
