My Garden in Spring 



for support, as they join on to the long and supple stems 

 that lie on the ground, but do not root again, and so pull 

 away with your weight and sway about, and are less help- 

 ful than a broken reed. But wherever there is a space 

 among their stems, Cortusa, Soldanella tnontana, and Saxifraga 

 rotundifolia fill it up. I had often purchased Cortusa and 

 tried it in various positions in the rock garden, and always 

 failed to make it happy enough to live the round of a year, 

 but some of those I brought away from this shady grove 

 have thriven and increased among Hepaticas and Wood 

 Anemones in a border shaded by Purple-leaved Hazels. 



The Spring Primulas wind up with the dumb-waiter- 

 like whorled flower-heads of P. japonica and its family. 

 Their idea of luxury is mud, and it suits their requirements 

 as well as those of a cockle-gatherer. The margin of a 

 pond and the bottom of a not too wet ditch provide a 

 happy home for them, and failing these the richer and 

 moister soil you can give them, the better will be the result. 

 There are some good colour forms of japonica, a so-called 

 salmon, which is much more like anchovy sauce if one must 

 give it a fishy name, a pure white with large orange eye, 

 one of the loveliest of Primroses, and a very deep coppery 

 red one, so there is no need to tolerate the old magenta 

 forms and still less the speckled and ring-straked abomina- 

 tions that a bad white strain produces so freely among its 

 seedlings. Even P. pulverulenta is crude and twangy beside 

 the best deep japonica. I planted some seedlings along the 

 pond edge and grouped pulverulenta with the deep red and 

 white japonicas, and directly I had done so was sorry, 

 believing the Chinese pulverulenta would kill the colour of 

 the Japanese. When they flowered it was the Chinese that 

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