My Garden in Spring 



ground behind the purple-leaved plants, some of which 

 form the background to this picture. The bed is edged 

 with a broad band of Hellebores. The Christmas Rose, 

 H. niger, nearest to us, and various named forms of Lenten 

 Roses at the further end, are planted in a bold group and 

 running right up to the stem of the Yew tree seen at the 

 back. The foreground is part of a band of various species 

 of Geranium which runs for some distance along the lawn 

 front of this bed and contains many treasures, results of 

 my own foreign wanderings and gleanings from other 

 gardens, for I always keep an open eye for a Geranium I 

 have not got. The leaves and buds shown here are of a fine 

 blue-purple form of G. ibericum ; then, as all can see, there 

 is a grouping of Dicentra spectabilis, chiefly of the old pink 

 form, as it is still the best. One plant is the white, or speak- 

 ing more truthfully, flesh-coloured variety, and the dumpy 

 one, the second counting from the right-hand side, is the 

 newer form erecta, interesting to grow with the others 

 but without the graceful beauty of the old form. The 

 rounded bush rising out of this is Conium maculatum, the 

 Hemlock, one of the most poisonous of plants, and generally 

 considered to have furnished the bowl of poison by which 

 Socrates was put to death. Gerard denounces it root and 

 branch, saying : " The greate Hemlock doubtlesse is not 

 possessed with any one good facultie, as appeareth by his 

 lothsome smell, and other apparant signes and therefore 

 not to be used in physicke." But both leaves and seeds 

 are still used to yield the alkaloid Conine, which has a 

 peculiar sedative action on the motor nerves, and therefore 

 is occasionally prescribed. 



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