60 MY GARDEN 



where they please. Other irises also occur here, 

 but these I reserve for future admiration. Then 

 you will see a patch of dryas octopetala that I grew 

 from seed. It loves limestone and creeps steadily for- 

 ward. Small cyclamens, setaceous phloxes, cenothera 

 pumila, and other things are swept away before it, 

 because dryas will not do everywhere, and the road 

 must be made smooth. In fruit and flower it is 

 beautiful. Above, on a separate ledge, grow ixias. 

 They ought to be dug up in winter, not for their 

 own sakes, but for the sake of their foliage, which 

 gets browned by the frost. The leaves spear in 

 October, and a hard winter rather worries them. 

 But the blossoms never seem any the worse. What 

 a grand family this is, and what a pity that nursery- 

 men's hybrids have quite taken the place of the old 

 original forms. These I never see or hear of now ; 

 but their pictures may still be admired in Curtis's 

 Botanical Magazine of a hundred years ago. No 

 hybrid that I have grown can compare in beauty to 

 the old plants. Think of grandiflora, falcata, gracil- 

 lima aristata, corymbosa (though that's a lapeyrousia 

 now), and amethystina. But perhaps these fine things 

 were not as hardy as those we plant to-day. The 

 green ixia certainly is better in a pot, though I 

 have bloomed it upon my rock-border very well. 



Below the ixias is a stretch where grows the yellow 

 satin-flower, or sisyrinchium californicum ; the blue 

 one, S. Bermudiana ; campanulas ; and phlox " G. F. 

 Wilson" the best of the whole alpine group of 

 phloxes, in my opinion. It is a beautiful, pure 



