HARDY EXOTIC FLOWERING PLANTS. 141 



tliev wcHild produce ;i very fine etl'ect. With the Fcrulas mit,dit l)e 

 grouped another handsome umbelliferous plant (Molopospernuim cicu- 

 tarium) ; and no doubt, when we know the ornamental qualities of the 

 order better, we shall find sundry other charming i)lants of similar 

 character. 



Ferns. — Xo plants may l)e naturalised more successfully and with 

 a more charming eft'ect than ferns. The royal ferns, of wliich the 

 bold foliage is reflected in the marsh waters of Northern America, will 

 do well in the many places where our own royal fern thriA-es. The 

 graceful maidenhair fern of the rich woods of the Eastern States and 

 the Canadas will thrive perfectly in any cool, shady, narrow lane, 

 or dyke, or in a shady wood. The small ferns that find a home on avid 

 alpine cliffs may be established on old walls and ruins. Cheilanthes 

 odora, which grows so freely on the sunny sides of walls in Soiithern 

 France, would be well worth trying in similar positions in the south 

 of England, the spores to be sown in mossy chinks of the walls. The 

 climbing fern Lygodium jialmatum, which goes as far north as cold 

 Massachusetts, would twine its graceful stems up the undershrubs in 

 an English wood too. In fact, there is no fern of the numbers that 

 inhabit the northern regions of Europe, Asia, and America, that may 

 not be tried with confidence in various positions, preferring for the 

 greater number such positions as we know our native kinds to thrive 

 best in. One could form a rich and stately type of wood -haunting 

 fern vegetation without employing one of our native kinds at all, 

 though, of course, generally the best way will be to associate all so 

 far as their habits and sizes will permit. Treat them boldly ; put 

 strong kinds out in glades ; imagine colonies of Daffodils among the 

 Oak and Beech Ferns, fringed by early Aconite, in the spots over- 

 shadowed by the branches of deciduous trees. Then, again, many of 

 these Ferns, the more delicate of them, could be used as the most 

 graceful of carpets for bold beds or groups of floA\-ering plants. They 

 would form part, and a very 



important part, of what we 

 have written of as evergreen 

 herbaceous plants, and 

 might well be associated 

 with them in true winter 

 gardens. 



Geranium, Geranmm, 

 Erodium. — Handsome and A hardy Geranium. 



