HAEDY FLOWERS IN THE SPRING GARDEN. 25 



which is robust enough to take care of itself on rock or border, 

 differs, after all, but very little from the choicest border variety, and 

 is perhaps a more useful and beautiful plant for the gardening public 

 generally. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



HARDY FLOWERS IN THE SPRING GARDEN. 



THE garden depends as much for its beauty in Spring on hardy 

 flowers as the Spring does for its life on the sun. How the earth is 

 embellished witn plant beauty at this season must be apparent to all 

 who can get a glimpse at her where yet even a little free. For 

 countless ages the flowers of Spring have been the joy of man. From 

 the time ot our first great poet, Chaucer, who forsook his book 

 and his devotion to walk in the mead, to see the flowers " against 

 the sunne" spread," to Milton's " vernal flowers," and Shakspeare's 

 "violets dim, but sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, or Cytherea's 

 breath," "pale primroses," "lilies of all kinds," and the "flower de 

 luce," their beauties have been sung by our greatest poets. But 

 beautiful as are our own wildings, we may enjoy a host of continental, 

 American, North Asian, and other plants, which being as hardy and 

 as easily grown as our own, would make the margins, so to speak, 

 of our gardens, paradisiacal enough to inspire a horticultural Burns. 

 How snowy white, how thoroughly hardy, and how pretty and 

 useful even as tiny evergreen shrubs, are the Iberises ! How they 

 live on or in anything thrive on rockwork, and luxuriate on the 

 level ground, even if wet and heavy enough to kill some of their 

 pretty allies ! Many and beautiful are the spring-flowering plants 

 of the same order, which would thrive if only granted a spot in some 

 outlying half- wild place, and would doubly repay in one spring day 

 the very slight trouble of obtaining and planting them. Where will 

 the Aubrietias not thrive if let alone, and what more beautiful ? The 

 numerous beautiful Narcissi strong, rampant-growing too how 

 lovely are they, and how effective in Spring ! How sweet is odorus, how 

 pale and graceful tortuosus, how golden and showjmaarimus! Is there any 

 spring-flower that can surpass in beauty or interest poeticus or ornatus, 

 which is very like the Poet's Narcissus, but a week or two earlier in 

 flower ? These will all grow in the wildest of shrubbery margins if 



