54 GARDENS PAST AND PRESENT 



in added perfection of form and colour, were the 

 products of garden skill and hybridisation, also 

 grew in wild luxuriance, yet did not lose their 

 cultivated characteristics. 



The oak wood itself, however, was but a part 

 of the whole. The hillside offered a variety of 

 aspects, and a good deal of the lower-lying ground 

 was damp, or wet, where moisture-loving plants 

 could be established. Ponds and watercourses with 

 fair lilies floating on their surface, and thousands 

 of Japanese irises clustering along their banks, are 

 a notable feature of this wonderful garden when 

 summer days are long; and truly it would take 

 a long day to become acquainted with even a part 

 of the treasures of plant life to be found there, for 

 they are well nigh inexhaustible. Few indeed 

 were the classes of plants left untried. Rhododen- 

 drons of the rarer Himalayan species, lilies, roses, 

 flowering shrubs, herbaceous perennials, bulbs of 

 countless kinds, Alpines, primroses, water plants 

 all found their place. It is probable that to this 

 experimental character a great deal of the charm 

 of the garden is owing. There was no great 

 effort after mere effect in the planting, the chief 

 aim being to make the groups of plants, and those 

 the best of their kind, happy each in its own 

 way. Nature took the rest into her own hands, 

 and in her keeping pictures grew and multiplied. 



For nearly a quarter of a century the owner 

 of this exceptional garden, happy in his self-im- 

 posed task, carried on the work of development, 

 bringing a thoroughly practical mind to bear upon 

 every detail, and what is more, being always ready 



