^ The Scented (garden ^ 



moist, deep, well-drained soil. The Scottish primrose 

 grows wild only in Orkney, Caithness and Sutherland, 

 and it requires the same conditions as the Bird's-eye 

 primrose. Oxlips are rarely seen growing wild nowadays, 

 except just occasionally in out-of-the-way parts of the 

 Eastern countries. The Caucasian oxlip, P. leucophylla, 

 is a much stronger grower than our English oxlip, 

 very hardy and splendid for naturalizing. There are 

 giant cowslips now, but nothing can equal the wild cow- 

 slip grown for its beauty and fragrance in our gardens for 

 centuries, but it is essentially a creature of the wild and 

 out of place in gardens. Cowslips and nightingales have 

 always been connected and there is an old saying, ' No 

 cowslips, no nightingales.' Most children have made 

 cowslip-balls or tisty tosties, as they -call them in the 

 West Country. 



1 1 call, I call ; whom do ye call ? 

 The maids to catch this cowslip ball : 

 But since these cowslips fading be, 

 Troth, leave the flowers and maids, take me. 

 Yet if that neither ye will do, 

 Speak but the word and I'll take you.' 



Our ancestors used cowslips in countless ways, the young 

 leaves and flowers in salads, in puddings and tarts. They 

 candied and pickled the flowers, they made cowslip wine, 

 tea, syrup and complexion washes from them. In Turner's 

 Herbal (1551) there are singularly few beauty recipes — 

 only four altogether. One of them concerns cowslips, 

 and Turner observes sternly, ' Some weomen sprinkle ye 

 floures of cowslip w k whyte wine and after still it and 

 wash their faces w e that water to drive wrinkles away 

 and to make them fayre in the eyes of God, whom they 



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