28o ENGLISH PLEASURE GARDENS 



the top of Mont Blanc. The most successful wild gar- 

 dens are those where a demand for exotics is ignored 

 and only English plants are assisted to fulfil a natural 

 bent. 



Alpine and rock gardens are substantially one and 



gardens. the same thing. These are adapted to a rocky country 

 where by rights they seem to belong. Artificial rock- 

 work constructed in places where there are no natural 

 cliffs or boulders has seldom a pleasing appearance. 

 The result when these gardens are carried out on an 

 extensive scale, as in the large grounds at Batsford 

 Park, may be very charming, but the effect when they 

 are crowded into a small space and almost crushed 

 under the walls of a suburban mansion is pitiful if not 

 grotesque. A great variety of Alpine plants are suc- 

 cessfully grown in England ; among them rockfoil, 

 sun roses, maiden pink, soapwort, Alpine linaria, Alpine 

 aster, rock speedwell, erinus silene, violets, arabis, 

 gentians, primula, and even the rare edelweiss. 



The bog A bog garden, it need hardly be explained, is a bog 



where plants, usually exotics, adapted to moist soil are 

 encouraged to thrive. Where there is no natural bog 

 available, an artificial one is constructed as described 

 at length by Mr. Robinson in the " English Flower 

 Garden." There was an artificial bog at Oxford in the 

 seventeenth century containing about sixteen hundred 

 species and varieties of plants. Among those now 



