THE BOG GARDEN 165 



ken of the busy hum of life, where beaded sun- 

 dew gleams, red and glistening on a soft carpet 

 of sphagnum moss and little trails of bog pim- 

 pernel or ivy-leaved bell flower wander in and out 

 amongst it. Places where hoary St John's wort 

 and pale, translucent rosettes of butter wort send 

 up their violet flowers and spread as they list 

 along the edge of the brown trickling water which 

 marks out a shining network of runnels for itself 

 through the sopping peat, and where, not without 

 a lurking fear of untoward consequences as we 

 step across the quaking surface of the bog, we 

 stoop to gather the downy pink clusters of cross- 

 leaved heath and orange spikes of asphodel, or, 

 it may be, of the pale blue marsh gentian. It is 

 well, while we may, to try to find all these in their 

 own wild haunts, for soon their place will know 

 them no more in any part of the countryside. 

 And it is meet, besides, that the knowledge of them 

 should be kept alive in our gardens, and not alone 

 between the dry boards of herbarium cases. 



But how ? 



Well, from the inherent character of things we 

 may guess that the bog garden, to succeed, must 

 be modelled after Nature's own pattern ; it cannot 

 be ordered according to any stiff lines of rule and 

 compass; but anyone who has essayed the joys 

 and perils of bog trotting, either at home or abroad, 

 will have no difficulty in understanding exactly the 

 quality of the spongy peaty soil which should, in 

 some sort, though without its stagnant malaria, 

 be reproduced if we want to grow bog plants. On 

 a small scale as, for example, a bog bed it is not 



