Violets, Cyclamen, and such-like shade-lovers are naturally, Shade 
at this corner of the garden, the main inhabitants. Some of Lovers 
these are growing, incongruously enough, in the hollowed 
portions of a row of “ querns” or ancient grinding-stones, their 
innocent faces peering from holes meant to be filled with corn 
for grinding. Further on, Lilies of the Valley, a perfect field 
of them, are filling the large triangular space made by the 
two angles of the wall. We may notice in passing that the 
Cyclamen are at present engaged in pushing their seed-vessels 
into the ground and covering them up with mould. I have 
sometimes wondered why Cyclamen, both the Spring and the 
Autumn varieties, seem, almost alone amongst vegetables, to 
possess this power of acting as their own gardeners. His own 
seedsman nearly every plant is, but when it comes to actually 
burrowing into the soil, the rest have, as a rule, to wait for 
the chance of finding some more or less clumsy two-legged 
assistant to act for them. A Cyclamen, on the other hand, 
tarries no such belated attention, but does its own spading. 
With that powerful spiral stalk, which acts as an effective 
lever, it is able to get the whole business finished before the 
seed-vessels of other plants are often sufficiently “ripened off” 
for collection. The advantage of such an apparatus is so 
obvious that it seems odd so few plants have been provided 
with it. 
That our big Yew is king of this garden there can, I 
think, as we look round us, be no question. Other trees, 
shrubs, and flowers add their grace and their glory to it, each 
in its several degree, but he is the master, one might almost say 
the creator, of it. In another walled garden, not far from this 
one, the dominating spirit of the scene is, or lately was, a 
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