MAY 89 



water longer than it naturally would remain in our sand. 

 For really dry weather some pipes are laid on undergound 

 to a tap in another part of the garden, from which the 

 water runs into a tub at the top of the rockery for 

 watering, and the overflow falls into the hole. In 

 this way our tiny water-bed is kept moist in the dryest 

 weather. 



We grow in the water one of the most beautiful of our 

 river plants, the Ranunculus lingua, or Water Buttercup. 

 It has a noble growth and large, shining, yellow flowers, 

 which bloom for a long time. Its only fault is that, if 

 given the position it likes, it grows and increases with 

 weed-like rapidity, and in a small space must be ruth- 

 lessly thinned out when it begins to grow in spring, and 

 often later as well. We have in the hole Japanese 

 Primulas and Japanese Iris (Kempferi), though they do not 

 flower as well as in the dry bed above, which is the 

 hottest, dryest, most sunny place in the garden ; and the 

 only attention they get, after being planted in good leaf 

 mould, is some copious waterings when the flower-buds 

 .are formed. They have the largest, finest flowers I have 

 ever seen in England. I must not forget our native 

 Forget-me-nots, which, Tennyson says, ' grow for happy 

 lovers.' It is a much more persistent flowerer than the 

 garden kind. In his ' Lancashire Garden ' Mr. Bright 

 praises very much the Primula japonica, and nothing 

 can be more charming and unusual than the whorled 

 growth of its flower-stems. He calls the blossoms crimson ; 

 I call them dark magenta at any rate, they have that 

 purple tinge which spoils so many reds. Where they 

 really look well is in a moist ditch or on the damp half- 

 shaded edge of a wood. If the ground is prepared for 

 them, and the white kind planted too, they sow themselves 

 in endless variety of tone from dark to light ; but they 

 are not especially suited for beds or mixing with other 



