WILD GARDENING 59 



and plant them this fall. In seven years they should number 

 fifty thousand. And the whole effect, bulbs, planting, and after 

 care, can be had for only one hundred dollars ! If you would 

 rather have great sheets of fragrant white flowers the first half of 

 May, you can have the poet's narcissus, which is the cheapest of 

 all, costing only five dollars a thousand ordinarily. 



WILD GARDENING BY THE WATER SIDE 



Water-lilies are naturalized on a great scale at Gravetye, and 

 the picture on plate 20 shows a corner of one of the lakes where 

 the water-lilies are just corning into bloom. This is a department 

 of gardening in which we have a chance to excel England, because 

 our hot summer sunshine brings out richer colours in these 

 gorgeous flowers. 



It will be many years, however, before we shall plant the mar- 

 gins of water with such consummate taste as Mr. Robinson. He 

 gave a pretty full list of the plants he uses in that superb English 

 periodical, Country Life Illustrated, on March 6, 1909. About 

 the only important plant in the list we cannot grow is pampas 

 grass. He uses many kinds of willows to obscure the line be- 

 tween land and water; Siebold's knotwort (Polygonum cuspidatum) 

 for great billowy masses of foliage; the moon daisy (Pyrethrum 

 uliginosum) for lush, herbaceous growth and clouds of white, daisy- 

 like flowers; and the royal fern for delicate greenery. 



But these are only samples. His grand effects come from 

 purity of design, i. e, using water-loving plants only. "One 

 essential thing," he says, "is the avoidance of variegated rubbish. 

 Some of the finest lakes I know are spoilt by being freely planted 

 with variegated conifers, which always, and usually very soon, 

 take a diseased and ugly colour. The variegated elder is planted 



