of an unfortunate wall, nor yet fill up its entire top with the Valerians 
tumbled and miscellaneous contents of a wheelbarrow. 
In another walled flower garden in this neighbourhood 
a small transformation scene was produced some years ago by 
means of the common crimson Valerian (Centranthus ruber). 
Now the Valerian is, as most people know, far from a parti- 
cularly easy person to manage properly. One of the best of 
hardy plants from its tenacity and practical indestructibility, it 
is also one of the most trying on account of its colour. Not 
that that colour is objectionable in itself—so long as the 
seedlings are selected with a reasonable amount of care—but it 
is, for some reason or other, detestable with nearly every other 
colour that comes near it. Scarlet is fatal, pink abominable, 
while the yellows tend, nearly all of them, to look even more 
crude and mustardy in its company than is their wont. Here 
the Valerians themselves were made the feature, and no colour 
stronger than their own rather dusky red was allowed to come 
within eye-shot. The garden in question is a large one—very 
large in fact—the wall on which the Valerians grow being 
of exceptional length; and not only were there Valerians 
in every cleft of it, and covering the whole top, but large 
clumps of them, mixed, if my memory is to be trusted, with 
white Columbines and London Pride, rose at intervals along the 
entire length of the border below. Such a scheme of colour 
does not perhaps sound promising, but the effect was admirable. 
That unity, which all gardens need, and a large garden needs 
especially, was attained, and attained moreover by the very 
simplest possible means. 
Turning for a moment to the purely native plants of 
our region, the fact that a considerable number, whose head- 
B 9 
