204 TRENCH GARDENS 



buttons gives a change to the light blue carpet, 

 and pink and mauve aubrietia, side by side, have 

 the effect of making a shot-silk groundwork. 



We do not merely have these dwarf spring 

 flowers in the front of the borders, but they are 

 also dispersed all over them, and only where mas- 

 sive shrubs like buddleia or ribes intervene, where 

 a dense clump of periwinkle or a bed of violets 

 comes, is there a cessation of the spring flowering 

 carpet. Being in irregular-shaped patches all the 

 way down it, they make an effective show. When 

 summer comes and their best days are over it is 

 easy enough to restrict their growth and take away 

 some of the biggest clumps that might interfere 

 with summer plants, which meanwhile have been 

 sleeping peacefully in the cool moisture that they 

 gave. We have no bulbs interspersed in the bor- 

 ders, because students, who ceaselessly come and 

 go as they complete their course of training, might 

 carelessly injure them in hoeing and weeding 

 amongst the large clumps of herbaceous stuff. 

 So the bulbs are left to take care of themselves in 

 the wilder parts of the garden on the terraces, 

 and when they have been gently forced in the 

 houses for winter decoration, are planted out in 

 great masses to come up as they choose between 

 the arabis and violets. Thus we have a waving, 

 golden ribbon of daffodils down the sides of the 

 garden, and here and there a stately orange- 

 coloured frittilaria waits to be admired and to 

 show the glistening tears that are to be found by 

 those who search within its pendent flowers. 



Primroses, daffodils, wallflowers, all have come 



