Brook-side, Water and Bog Gardens loi 



country in handsome water-plants is not known to 

 many even of those who know our wild flowers 

 — until perhaps they row up a back-water of the 

 Thames, where the water-plants are often superb, or 

 see the great size and variety of those by the Norfolk 

 Broads. 



Nearly all landscape gardeners seem to have put 

 a higher value on the pond than on the brook as an 

 ornament to the garden; but many pictures might be 

 formed by a brook on its way through glade or 

 meadow. No such beauty comes through the pond, 

 which gives us water in repose — imprisoned water; 

 while the brook ripples between mossy rocks or flower- 

 fringed banks, its margin, too, giving an excellent place 

 for hardy flowers. Hitherto we have only used in such 

 places water or bog plants, but the improvement of the 

 brook-side will be most readily effected by planting 

 the banks also with vigorous hardy flowers, making 

 it a wild garden, in fact. Many of our finest herbaceous 

 plants, from Iris to Meadow-sweet, thrive in the moist 



■*■ ' ^ ...■ri,.rn.i i— -'■" *'"*" ~^"""' r -Ti-rmriiT m. 



soil; many hardy flowers, also,' tRatdo not in nature 

 prefer such soil, exist in health in it. Plants on the 

 bank would have this merit over water-plants, that 

 we could fix them, whereas water-plants are apt to 

 spread too much and often one kind exterminates 

 the rest. The plants, of course, should be such as 

 would grow freely among Grass and take care of 

 themselves. If distinct groups were encouraged, the 

 effect would be all the better. The common way of 



