88 GARDENS PAST AND PRESENT 



mas daisies with their sad refrain of ' ' farewell 

 summer," but each so artfully grouped as to form 

 a lovely garden picture, which imprints itself on 

 the memory to be carried away as a possession for 

 a lifetime. Climbing roses, in their season, tumble 

 over low dividing walls in clustering masses of 

 pink and white and apricot, or ramble into the 

 inviting arms of some fostering tree. But the 

 greatest of all the charms of that sweet garden are 

 the green paths which open wide vistas through 

 the wood and the heather, and verge upon the 

 lawns. With what love and reverent feeling after 

 the fitness and simplicity of Nature has this wild 

 wood garden been planned and carried out. All 

 kinds of foreign flowering shrubs rhododendrons, 

 cistus, kalmias, gaultherias belonging naturally 

 to the peaty staple of the heath land, mingle freely 

 with the undergrowth fringing the wood, striking 

 never a discordant note. Rare giant lilies rear 

 their white spires beneath the strange English 

 trees as happily as in their native glades ; there 

 are drifts of daffodils and Solomon's seal and little 

 colonies of rare species of dog's-tooth violet, which 

 have made themselves a home amongst the ferns 

 and the moss. The sunshine filters through the 

 tender silken green of the beech boughs in the glad 

 English springtide, and flecks the heathery paths 

 with dancing shadows. On early summer nights, 

 when the full moon floods the long glades with 

 silver light, we lean perhaps against the open case- 

 ment, to look and listen. A nightingale trills out 

 its love song in the stillness ; a lordly pheasant, 

 disturbed, wakes up, flaps his wings and crows ; 



