38 The Wild Garden. 



course, to carry out such planting properly, a little 

 more time at first and a great deal more taste than 

 are now employed would be required ; but what a 

 difference in the result ! In the kind of borders 

 I advocate, nearly all the trouble would be over 

 with the first planting, and labour and skill could be 

 successively devoted to other parts of the grounds. 

 All that the covered borders would require, would be 

 an occasional weeding or thinning, &c., and perhaps 

 in the case of the more select spots, a little top- 

 dressing with fine soil. Here and there, between 

 and amongst the plants, such things as Forget-me- 

 nots and Violets, Snowdrops and Primroses, might 

 be scattered about, so as to lend the borders a 

 floral interest even at the dullest seasons ; and 

 thus we should be delivered from digging and 

 dreariness, and see our ugly borders alive with 

 exquisite plants. The chief rule should be — never 

 show the naked earth : carpet or clothe it with 

 dwarf subjects, and then allow the taller ones to 

 rise in their own wild way through the turf or 

 spray. It need hardly be said that this argument 

 against the digging applies to two or three beds of 

 shrubs, and places where the "shrubbery" is little 

 larger than the dining-room, as much as to the 

 large country seat, public park, or botanic garden. 



