Spring bound in wet weather, and red Damask Roses, redder than 
Flowers ever is known in the South. 
% 
Ah, how I loved them! But the Spring was the splendid 
garden-time, the time for Hepatica, blue and white and pink. 
Great cushions of these three lovely colours, bloomed abun- 
dantly with all their heart and soul, as it were, for the dear 
earth of the “‘ North countrie” kept ever moist and cool about 
their feet. In English gardens the Hepatica never is quite 
happy, though sometimes they will grow on for years. Then 
there were Auriculas, purple-black and powdered green, and 
Alpine lilac and yellow, besides borders of an Alpine kind, 
coloured the clearest mauve, and still rarer white. And no- 
where else grew St Bruno’s Lily in such grand clumps. 
Hedges of Beech or Yew are always more or less a feature 
in the North. They serve for shelter, and they give character. 
In that garden were two Cotoneaster hedges, in Autumn 
diapered with scarlet berries ; they went up the length of it, and 
at the very end opened out on a half-circle of turf, and a sun- 
dial and garden seats. If the sun-dial could speak it might 
tell some stories—stories of the talk, the interchange of 
sorrowful or happy thoughts, that on sun-bright afternoons 
went on around it. But perhaps voices were mufHled somewhat 
in a dark, small-flowered Clematis that wound up round the 
stone column, or by certain light mists of cloud that were wont 
to hang about it, too light and low to hide the sun! 
Very common in Scotch gardens are borders of deep blue 
Gentian, as magnificently blue as any that a mountain climber 
may meet with on the slopes of Monte Rosa. The Gentian is 
not grown in these days, however, so abundantly as formerly, 
for the Laird and the Lady of the house or castle belonging 
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