PREFACE. 
WuEN I began, some years ago, to plead the cause of the in- 
numerable hardy flowers against the few tender ones, put out 
at that time in a formal way, the answer frequently was, “We 
cannot go back to the mixed border ”—that is to say, the old 
way of arranging flowers in borders. Knowing, then, a little 
of the vast world of plant beauty quite shut out of our 
gardens by the “system,” in vogue, I was led to consider the 
ways in which it might be introduced to our gardens; and, 
among various ideas that then occurred to me, was the name 
and scope of the “wild garden.” I was led to think of the 
enormous number of beautiful hardy plants from other 
countries which might be naturalised, with a very slight 
amount of trouble, in many situations in our gardens and 
