58 A GARDEN DIARY 



greens is a constant surprise when one comes to 

 collect them, and the fact that there should be 

 so many speaks volumes for a climate that we 

 are none of us ever weary of abusing. Apart 

 from absolute rock-plants, nearly all of which are 

 evergreen, there are a number of others, which 

 rarely or never lose their leaves, and whose 

 presence saves banks and hollows like these from 

 the reproach of bareness, and further takes away 

 certainly ought to take away all excuses for 

 visitations from that Tool of the Destroyer, the 

 pitchfork. Of such plants none are better than 

 certain campanulas, including our own hair-bells, 

 both the blue and the white. Wood - sorrels 

 again are excellent in a shady place, or, for a 

 sunnier one, there is their energetic cousin Oxalis 

 floribunda, in this soil the most undaunted of 

 colonisers, growing all the winter. " Creeping 

 Jenny " again, and " Blue-eyed Mary," delightful 

 things with delightful names, will cover as much 

 space as they are allowed to do. Of the more 

 easily grown forget-me-nots there are at least 

 four kinds palustris, for planting close to the 

 water, or in it ; dissitiflora, happy all the summer, 

 so long as it gets a little shade ; sylvatica and 

 alpestris, growing anywhere, and everywhere. 

 Epimediums, again, are excellent, though apt to 

 get a little rusty in the winter. So is Tellina 

 grandiflora, an unwisely named plant, since its 

 strength lies, not in its flowers, but its leaves. 



