212 The Wild Garden 



than the Water Elder (Viburnum Opulus), common 

 in Sussex woods, and often seen near the water-side 

 in Surrey. Mr. Anthony Waterer, who has the finest 

 nursery in England in our own day, told me that 

 when asked for a number of it he could not find 

 them in his own nursery, or in any other. As 

 many of our beautiful wild flowers, and even our trees 

 and shrubs, are strangers to our own gardens, I 

 cannot do better than try to show, so far as I may, 

 what beautiful things may be gathered from our British 

 Flora that may have charms for our gardens and wild 

 gardens. However well people may know the beauty 

 of our fields and woods in spring or summer, few 

 have any idea of the great number of flowers that 

 are wild in our own country, and worth a home 

 in gardens — at least in those of a picturesque nature. 

 Few of us have much notion of the great variety of 

 beauty that may be culled from British flowers alone. 

 Many of us have full opportunity of seeing the beauties 

 of the fields and hedges ; not so many the mountain 

 plants, and few, such rare gems as Gentiana Verna, 

 which grows wild in Teesdale, and here and there 

 on the western shores of Ireland; or the mountain 

 Forget-me-not, a precious little dwarf alpine that is 

 found but rarely in the north. It is only by a good 

 choice of the plants of the British Isles that we can 

 hope to arrive at a ' garden of British plants.' 



It is not only the curious and rare that may afford 

 us interest among the plants of Britain ; among them 



