SCOTTISH GAKDENS 



who has renovated and enlarged the seventeenth 

 century mansion with tasteful discretion. 



The chief features of the garden of Whitehouse 

 are at their best, like daffodils, "before the swallow 

 dares." Nowhere else in Scotland, and only in one 

 place in England (Stocken Hall, Lincolnshire) have 

 I seen such wealth of winter aconite. A belt of 

 trees round the garden is thickly carpeted with them; 

 they run through the ivy and grass, which sparkle 

 with myriads of their little golden cups and dainty 

 green frills; only the surrounding stone walls and 

 hard gravel paths suffice to keep them within 

 limits. 



It was a day of sullen gusts and bitter snow 

 showers when I visited Whitehouse ; the lawn of 

 crocuses, which Miss Wilson has depicted so 

 charmingly, was but a mass of tightly closed purple 

 cones, for the crocus is too careful of its golden 

 anthers and stigma to open except in full sunshine. 

 To the crocus, as to most herbs which hold their 

 blooms erect, is given the power of shutting out foul 

 weather; but the winter aconite heeds neither cold 

 nor storm. Appearing above ground when the days 

 are not long past their shortest, it seems determined 

 to enjoy every ray of light that it can gather, 

 before it obeys the law of its being, and goes to 

 its long sleep underground throughout the summer 

 and autumn months. Certainly that innumerable 

 company of golden blossoms remains the one bright 

 memory of that unkindly February day. 



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