CHAPTEE V. 



PLANTS CHIEFLY FITTED FOR THE WILD GARDEN. 



What tirst suggested the idea of the wild 

 garden, and even the name to me, 

 was the desire to provide a home 

 for a great number of exotic plants 

 that are unfitted for garden culture 

 in the old sense. Many of these 

 plants have great beauty when in flower, 

 and perhaps at other seasons, but they are 

 frequently so free and vigorous in growth 

 that they overrun and destroy all their more 

 delicate neighbours. Many, too, are so coarse 

 that they are objectionable in choice borders, 

 and after flowering they leave a blank or a 

 mass of unsightly stems. These plants are 

 unsightly in gardens, and the main cause of 

 the neglect of hardy flowers; yet many are beautiful at certain 

 stages. A tall Harebell, for example, stiffly tied up in a 

 garden border, as has been the fashion where plants of this 

 kind have been grown at all, is at best of times an unsightly 

 object ; but the same plant growing amongst the long 



