6 MY SHRUBS 



would be hurt if we did not. I always fall to the bait that a thing 

 " does well on the West Coast of Ireland." It is extraordinary 

 the number of fine plants that do well on the West Coast of Ireland, 

 though they simply won't breathe the air of the West of England. 

 I shall go to the West Coast of Ireland some day, with an open 

 mind, to satisfy myself about these allegations. 



There are a few points that even gardeners forget, and one 

 is that for plants that would enjoy the Equator, two degrees of 

 frost are quite as fatal as fifty. We struggle in snug corners with 

 sub-tropical vegetation, and whisper to it hopefully that our 

 winters down here are a mere flea-bite, and that everything is 

 going to be all right. But we might just as well tell pineapple and 

 sugar-cane that it is going to be all right, as some of our victims. 

 In fact, an English winter is a very severe ordeal for Southerners, 

 and, though the conditions vary profoundly, and we can certainly 

 here, on the fringe of the Channel, grow things which you in the 

 Midlands must not dream about, still, we have our dour experiences 

 and tragedies from which you escape. For you feel not even 

 tempted to make certain experiments ; but we are lulled into 

 fancied security ; our fine pieces grow gigantic, and we forget 

 and become vainglorious. Then follows the downfall — as when, 

 not many years ago, in Cornwall, every Clethra arbor ea of im- 

 portance in the county was felled to the ground by fifteen degrees 

 of frost. Ten years must elapse before these clethras build 

 themselves up again. But if a Canary Islander thus suffers, 

 how much more is a shrub from the fringe of the tropics in danger ? 



Leucodendron argenteum is, of course, a tree at home ; but my 

 specimen of this most beautiful foliage plant stands no more than 

 six feet high, and has, until now, lived in a pot and emerged only 



