158 The Wild Garden. 



found but rarely in Yorkshire and Scotland. It is 

 only by a careful selection from all classes of the 

 plants of the British isles that we can hope to 

 arrive at anything satisfactory in the way of a 

 " garden of British plants." I do not by this mean 

 a " scientific " or botanical arrangement of English 

 flowers, but a charming little hardy garden, or series 

 of beds filled exclusively with the better kinds of 

 our native plants, dotted here and there with our 

 native shrubs, and surrounded, if the situation 

 required it or admitted of it, with Eflglish 

 trees and shrubs, from the sweet gale to the 

 fragrant "May," or scarlet-berried Mountain Ash. 

 There is nothing difficult in the making of such 

 a garden, and I think its charms, to lovers of the 

 garden generally, would be very great. In it might 

 be exhibited the beauties of some of our prettiest 

 spring flowers, of not a few really showy plants and 

 neat dwarf shrubs, and of most of the charming 

 meadow flowers worth cultivating : while the 

 Orchids, which we generally have to seek with 

 some little patience, even in good plant districts, 

 might also be seen thriving in it. However, the 

 best plan of all is to scatter about our own wild 

 flowers in the wild and semi-wild places so often 

 before alluded to. 



