6 MY SHRUBS 
would be hurt if we did not. I always fall to the bait that a thing 
“does well on the West Coast of Ireland.” It is extraordinary 
the number of fine plants that do well on the West Coast of Ireland, 
though they simply won’t breathe the air of the West of England. 
I shall go to the West Coast of Ireland some day, with an open 
mind, to satisfy myself about these allegations. 
There are a few points that even gardeners forget, and one 
is that for plants that would enjoy the Equator, two degrees of 
frost are quite as fatal as fifty. We struggle in snug corners with 
sub-tropical vegetation, and whisper to it hopefully that our 
winters down here are a mere flea-bite, and that everything is 
going to be all right. But we might just as well tell pineapple and 
sugar-cane that it is going to be all right, as some of our victims. 
In fact, an English winter is a very severe ordeal for Southerners, 
and, though the conditions vary profoundly, and we can certainly 
here, on the fringe of the Channel, grow things which you in the 
Midlands must not dream about, still, we have our dour experiences 
and tragedies from which you escape. For you feel not even 
tempted to make certain experiments; but we are lulled into 
fancied security ; our fine pieces grow gigantic, and we forget 
and become vainglorious. ‘Then follows the downfall—as when, 
not many years ago, in Cornwall, every Clethra arborea of im- 
portance in the county was felled to the ground by fifteen degrees 
of frost. Ten years must elapse before these clethras build 
themselves up again. But if a Canary Islander thus suffers, 
how much more is a shrub from the fringe of the tropics in danger ? 
Leucodendron argenteum is, of course, a tree at home; but my 
specimen of this most beautiful foliage plant stands no more than 
six feet high, and has, until now, lived in a pot and emerged only 
