82 The Wild Garden 



with low shrubs and hardy plants like, say, Starworts 

 between, there are impediments to the leaves rushing 

 about in the way mentioned. Our annual digging, 

 mutilation, raking away of leaves, and exposing__on 

 bare earthy borders plants that in _NaUirejhelter each 

 other, and are shielded from hard frost and heat by 

 layers of fallen leaves, which gradually sink into light 

 soil for the young roots, are practices that must be 

 given up by all who look into the needs of our hardy 

 garden flora. In my plantation 10,000 stems of 

 Starworts and other plants all the winter standing 

 brown in their place, keep hold of all the leaves that 

 may get among them ! 



Woods. 



Woods vary so much in their character and the 

 plants growing beneath the trees, that we may for 

 ever see different effects, and a thousand things may 

 be suggested to us by woods. In Pine woods in 

 mountain districts we may see sheets of Ferns and 

 even alpine flowers in them, and our own southern 

 Pine woods in Surrey and Hants often spring out 

 of gardens of lovely Heaths. In the same parish we 

 find woods so close with oaks and underwood, that 

 only tall and stout flowers like wood Angelica, showy 

 Ragwort, large wood Grasses and Foxglove, French 

 Willow and Bracken will grow — these, too, if one goes 

 into the wood and looks at them, often giving us 

 pictures. But this little book cannot tell us the lessons 



