130 The Wild Garden 



and little variety of surface beyond a few gravel banks 

 thrown up long before. The garden is on each side of 

 a Grass drive, Avith scattered trees on the one hand and 

 rather shady ground on the other. The most beautiful 

 aspect at the end of May after an ungenial spring, which 

 had not allowed the Paeonies to unfold, was that of the 

 German Irises, with their great Orchid-like blossoms 

 seen everywhere through the wood, clear above the 

 Grass and other herbage— stately flowers that, like the 

 Daffodils, fear no weather, yet with hues that cannot be 

 surpassed by tropical flowers. If this wild garden should 

 teach only effective ways of using the many beautiful Iris 

 in our garden flora, it would do good service. The 

 Irises are perfectly at home in the plantation and among 

 the Grass and wild flowers. When they go out of 

 flower, they will not be in the way as in a ' mixed ' 

 border, but rest in the grass till awakened in spring. 



In the wild garden the fairest of our own wild flowers 

 may be happily grouped with like plants from other 

 countries. Here the sturdy Bell-flowered Scilla (S. 

 campanulata) grows wild with our Wood Hyacinth ; the 

 white and pink forms also of the last - named look 

 beautiful here associated with the common well-known 

 form. The earlier kinds of Scilla are past ; they are 

 nice for the wild garden, especially S. bifolia, which 

 thrives freely in woods. The Lily of the Valley did not 

 inhabit the wood before ; it was pleasant to thin out 

 some of its matted tufts in the garden and carry them 

 to the wild garden, where they are now in bloom. The 



