CHAPTER XVI. 



The Garden of British Wild Flowers and Trees. 



My learned and travelled friends who tell me I cannot 

 naturalize Narcissus in thick grass, will hardly say we 

 cannot grow our own lovely British tree willows, or 

 have our own native Heaths in all their delightful 

 variety growing near us in picturesque tangles, and 

 some of our own more beautiful Wild Roses in the 

 hedge ! The passion for the exotic is so universal that 

 our own finest plants are never planted, while money 

 is thrown away like chaff for worthless exotic trees like 

 the WelUngtonia, on which tree alone fortunes have 

 been wasted. Once on the bank of a beautiful river 

 in Ireland, the Barrow, I was shown a collection of 

 ornamental Willows, and very interesting they were, 

 but among them not one of our native Willows, which 

 are not merely as good as any of the garden Willows 

 but as good in beauty as the Olive tree — even where 

 the Olive is most beautiful. We search the world 

 over for flowering shrubs — not one of which is prettier 



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