WATER MARGINS 155 



Alder trunks, cut up two feet long and driven into the 

 wet ground, will make a durable and effectual sub- 

 structure. 



It is a matter of simple comfort to provide these 

 easy ways ; but it is equally important that such paths 

 should be so done that they have no appearance of 

 garden paths. It is not an easy matter to get a 

 labourer to understand that a path in woodland or on 

 water margin or other wild place must not have hard 

 edges, but that, once the needful width is cleared or 

 dug out or levelled, that the edge should die away 

 imperceptibly into the true character of what is next 

 to it on either side, just as it does in a forest track that 

 has been used for ages, but has never been made or 

 mended. 



Any hard edge of walling, cement, or wooden 

 campshotting is fatal to beauty of wild water margin, 

 and makes free planting almost impossible. Such 

 edges may be needed in more formally designed 

 garden ground, but they are not only needless, but 

 actually destructive of beauty in a pond or pool of 

 informal shape. A pond-head sometimes must be 

 rather straight and in some cases may have to be 

 walled, but when the wall is not needful and the 

 pond edge is to be planted for beauty, its natural 

 shore should be treasured and retained, no matter 

 how boggy or unsound it may be in places. It is 

 all the prettier if the path does not exactly follow 

 its edge, but only occasionally reaches it ; and it 

 can be made quite dry and sound by some such 

 method as that above described at a far less cost than 



