Anemones 



compared with the double blanda, but is interesting in 

 spite of its rather washy colour. 



The typical blue form is one of the best plants for 

 naturalising in semi-wild parts of the garden. I have 

 planted some among rough grass at the edge of the pond 

 and running back into the border among deciduous 

 shrubs, and those among the grass do quite as well as 

 those in the border soil, and like most flowers rising out 

 of grass look all the prettier for it. The Anemones that 

 thrive best here and so give most pleasure and effect are 

 those of the nemorosa section, with running, stoloniferous 

 growths that ask to be kept plump and cool or even moist 

 throughout the season. It puzzles me why they should 

 do so much better than those with tubers that can stand 

 any amount of baking and drying off. You can keep A. 

 coronaria and hortensis dry for weeks or months without 

 injuring them otherwise than causing them to grow out 

 of their chosen season, but try the same treatment on any 

 nemorosa and you will find it as dead as Rameses the 

 Great, and in this dry garden one would think I could 

 give a happy home to the sun-lovers on grilling ledges of 

 the rock garden more easily than I could imitate the cool 

 woodland home of the nemorosa section. Of course I do 

 what I can for them by finding western or northern ex- 

 posures for them, and tucking up their little naked brown 

 limbs with a new leaf-soil quilt when I see they have worn 

 a way through the old one, and most of them have spread 

 into good-sized carpets and are among my greatest joys 

 of Spring. Two round beds cut in the turf, and full of 

 dwarf shrubs and herbaceous plants, are almost carpeted 

 by them in April. Shaded, low-lying parts of the rock 

 209 O 



