332 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 



Very many things may succeed well that are not 

 specially noted here, but the following list of fifty her- 

 baceous plants have all been seen really growing, and 

 coming up, year after year, in private gardens in London. 

 Some are not so sturdy as others ; for instance, neither 

 alyssum nor phlox flourish as well as thrift or the 

 members of the iris tribe, but all are hardy in London. 

 Thomas Fairchild, who had a famous nursery garden 

 at Hoxton, writing of City gardens in 1722, gives his 

 experience of plants that succeed best, and many on 

 his list are those that do well still. He specially notes 

 some growing in the most shut-in parts of the City, 

 which were flourishing : fraxinella in Aldermanbury, 

 monkshood and lily of the valley near the Guildhall, 

 bladder senna in Crutched Friars, and so on, mentioning 

 many of those which still prove the most smoke-resisting. 

 One large, coarse, but handsome plant deserves mention, 

 as it grows so well it will seed itself, and that is the 

 giant heracleum. It propagates itself in the garden of 

 Lowther Lodge, Kensington Gore, and in much more 

 confined spaces, even in the garden used by the London 

 Hospital, near the Mile End Road. 



LIST OF FIFTY HERBACEOUS PLANTS 



Alyssum. Comfrey. 



Auricula. Crane's bill. 



Bachelors' buttons. Creeping Jenny. 



Bugles. Crown Imperial. 



Campanula — several varieties. Cyclamen. 



Candytuft. Day lilies. 



Carnations. Dictamnus fraxinella (burning bush). 



Centaurea. Doronicum (leopard's bane). 



Chrysanthemums. Erigeron (Fleabane). 



Columbines. Funkias (Plantain lilies). 



