OF WILD GARDENS 85 



tially congruous. Nature herself is our best guide, 

 for she makes no mistakes. We do not find prim- 

 roses sown broadcast on a barren and shadeless 

 mountain side, nor sundew clustering upon a dry 

 stone wall. The rule should be, like to like the 

 denizens of the wood for the woodland, mountain 

 herbage for the rock, moisture-loving plants for 

 the bog. Indigenous they need not be, for there 

 is almost unlimited choice from every temperate 

 clime. Thus, the Apennine anemone, having the 

 same character and a habitat by nature like our 

 own wood anemone, is perfectly in accord in the 

 same surroundings. It never startles us to see 

 colonies of it lifting up soft blue flowers at our 

 feet in any English wilderness walk on an early 

 spring day ; on the contrary, its charm is un- 

 utterable. A stray field poppy in the like position 

 would be a weed as much out of place as in a 

 bed of roses, and would give precisely the same 

 jarring shock of unfitness. 



A delightful experience of woodland planting in 

 the west of England comes to mind. It was early 

 in the year, and the trees, excepting only the 

 hollies and ilexes, were bare and leafless. A path- 

 way led along the margin of a fine sheet of orna- 

 mental water ; but the low mossy bank of the 

 woodside which bordered it reached almost to the 

 edge of the pool, and there the ground was car- 

 peted with hundreds of hardy cyclamens. The 

 rosy flush of the flowers had faded with the autumn 

 tints, and already the long stalks were tightening 

 their spirals to draw down the forming seed-pods 

 into the safe custody of mother earth ; but the 



