290 BOG PLANTS 



plant grow with luxurious abandon. The lake will attract birds 

 to splash in the water and butterflies to hover over the flowers. 

 Every flower that fringes the lake will have its loveliness doubled 

 by its reflection in the mirror below. And, finally, the running 

 brook will make your garden musical the year round, its every 

 note brimming with suggestions of happiness and health. Truly, 

 a delightful picture! 



Another advantage in having a bog garden is that you can't 

 help succeeding with it. The water insures that. The wonderful 

 luxuriance it will produce is a never-ending delight. No matter 

 how rare, costly, or interesting any plant may be, one cannot enjoy 

 it to the full if it looks starved, dwarfed, unhappy. And water 

 side plants are so obviously prosperous and contented that it 

 makes one happy just to look at them. 



THE EFFECT OF TROPICAL LUXURIANCE 



For example, you have probably seen and admired a border 

 plant known as the giant knotwood (Polygonum Sieboldii or 

 cuspidatum). In the hardy border it may grow three feet high, 

 but at the water side it grows six feet high and makes a huge, round 

 bush that is a perfect cloud of white bloom in July. And this 

 water magic is even more remarkable in the case of another knot- 

 weed, known as sacaline (Polygonum Sachalinense), since the latter 

 is altogether too rough and coarse for a formal garden. In the 

 bog garden this objection vanishes and the plant takes on new 

 interest. It is like the piece of stage scenery which seems out- 

 rageously crude when one stands right by it, but sufficiently 

 refined when one is at the proper distance. In other words, 

 the first aesthetic demand that a bog garden makes is for a certain 

 number of plants on a heroic scale to illustrate the magical effect 



