SOME KESUI/rS. 107 



on ail Indian's blanket havi- to tin- best pictures. In fighting, some 

 years later, in tlie various' journals njicn tn me, tin- battle nf nature 

 and variety against this saddening and blank nKmotony, I was occasion- 

 ally met by a ridicule of the old-fashioned mixed border which the 

 bedding plants had supplanted. Now, a well -arranged and varied 

 mixed border may Vie made one of the most beautiful of gardens ; Imt 

 to so fijrm it re(|uires some kncjwledge of plants, as well as good taste. 

 Nevertheless, the objection was just as concerned the great majority of 

 mixed borders ; they were ragged, unmeaning, and even monotonous. 



I next began to consider the \'arious ways in which hardy plants 

 might be grown wholly apart from either way (the bedding plants or 

 that of the mixed border), and the vsild (jurden, or garden foriiu'd in 

 the wilderness, grove, shrubbery, copse, or rougher parts of the pleasure 

 garden, M-as a ]iet idea which I afterwards threw into the form of a 

 book with this name. In nearly all our gardens we have a great deal 

 of surface wholly wasted — wide spaces in the shrubbery fre(|uently 

 dug over in the winter, plantations, grass- walks, hedgerows, rough 

 banks, slopes, etc., which hitherto have grown only grass and wee<ls, 

 ami on these a rich garden flora may be grown. Hundreds of the 

 more vigorous and handsome herbaceous plants that exist will thrive 

 in these jilaces and do further good in exterminating weeds and pre- 

 venting the need of digging. Every kind of surface may be embellished 

 by a person vrith. any slight knowledge of hardy plants — ditch-banks, 

 gravel-pits, old trees, hedge-banks, rough, grassy places that are never 

 mown, copses, woods, lanes, rocky or stony ground. 



The tendency has always been to suppose that a plant from 

 another country than our^ own was a subject retjuiring much attention, 

 not thinking that the conditions that occur in such places as men- 

 tioned above, are, as a rule, quite as favourable as those that obtain 

 in nature throughout the great northern regions of Europe, Asia, and 

 America. Here some common plants of the woods of the Eastern 

 States are considered rarities and coddled accordingly to their destruc- 

 tion. It is quite a phenomenon to see a flower on the little Yellow 

 Dog's-Tooth Violet, which I remember seeing in rpiantity among the 

 grass in your noble Central Park. When one has but a few specimens 

 of a plant, it is best no doubt to carefully watch them. But an 

 exposed and carefully dug garden border is the worst place to grow 

 many wood and copse j^lants (I mean plants that grow naturally in 

 such places), and in many uncultivated spots here the American 

 Dog's-Tooth Violet would flower ([uite as freely as at home. Your 



