The Naturalistic Garden 73 



speedily transform it into a bank of beauty. Under the trees, along 

 a walk or drive, the naturalistic planter will place pockets of soil, 

 mellow and cool with leaf-mould, for the spreading masses of rhodo- 

 dendron and laurel that keep cheerfully green all winter, and for 

 azaleas that include all the shades of sunset. Spires of white 

 foxglove will ascend at the half-shaded entrance to his woodland 

 cathedral aisles. He will sow poppies broadcast in his most 

 informal garden and enjoy a waving ribbon of them along the 

 sunny edge of a walk. He may even hope to naturalise them 

 successfully among the grain and pasture grasses as one sees 

 them growing in Europe. The enthusiastic garden lover ploughs 

 a bit of waste ground early every spring and seeds it down with 

 wheat and scarlet poppies that are a ravishing delight even 

 if not commercially profitable. He scatters the portulaca's 

 tiny seed in the driest, sunniest places where no other flower 

 would grow, for he knows that a plant that is next of kin to 

 "pusley" most pestiferous of weeds is not more easily 

 discouraged by drought. I have seen it blooming luxuriantly on 

 a sandy beach just beyond reach of the tide. Such old-fashioned 

 common crowders of finer garden flowers as the tiger lily 

 and the orange day lily, scorned by the pretentious, take on 

 new splendour when naturalised among the tall grass of an 

 unmowed meadow. 



When the gardener of the landscape school comes to plant 

 around a home his problem becomes more difficult, for here nature, 

 who puts no houses in her pictures, cannot help him with designs. 

 His best endeavours will be spent in attempting to reconcile nature 

 to the house, by softening its angular outlines and doing what he 

 can to divert the eye from its least attractive features, with the help 

 of trees, shrubs, and vines, rather than essay the impossible task 



