THE WILD GARDEN AND THE SPRING GARDEN 



THE WILD GARDEN 



It may be as well to state at once that, in the writer's conception, 

 the Wild Garden is not synonymous with the Spring Garden, though 

 doubtless, in our climate, it is generally at its best in the Spring. 



Nature teaches us what the WUd Garden should be like, and who 

 , that has seen a mass of Bluebells in a recently-cut 



Natures copse — " the heavens upbreaking through the earth " 



— or a carpet of Primroses fringed with the delicate 

 pink of Windflowers just bursting into blossom, can doubt that she 

 is the mistress to whom we should submit ourselves to learn the art 

 of forming a Wild Garden. And if we will go to her in a teachable 

 and tractable spirit we may learn, with her generous help, to emulate 

 her efforts and assist her in making beautiful the waste places of the 

 earth. 



Yet it must be admitted that the Wild Garden should not be 



attempted in a small plot of ground; its essential 



c°*ii^^*d'***''^^^'^^^t^'^i^*^^^ s-re a broad massing of growth and 



ma ar en (,QjQyj.g^ g. spacious outlook, the beauty of the whole 



effect rather than that of the individual flower. 



Thus it will be seen that the functions of a Wild Garden do not 

 clash with those of any other garden, but should be 

 Special reserved for spaces where neither the Spring Garden, 



rovmce ^^^ ^-^^ Rock Garden, nor the groups of hardy plemts 



in bed and border would be suitable; places such as the fringes of 

 woodland walks and drives, the unused ground in grove and copse, 

 the banks of streamlets, or even the coarse grass of some waste piece 

 of pasture. And in the WUd Garden, wherever it may be planted, 

 is the place for those flowers — and there are many of them — ^which 

 may rightly be considered unworthy of cultivation in a trim garden, 

 or which are apt to spread so rapidly as to become a nuisance where 

 choicer plants are grown. Of such are the common Michaelmas 

 Daisy, the Perennial Sunflower, Monkshood (Aconitum Nap), the 

 common Milkweed, with its fragrant flowers of deep purple, or (in 

 moist situations) the common Reed, indigenous to this country, 



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