108 THE WILD GARDEN. 
beautiful little Mayflower, Epigeea repens, we have never succeeded in 
growing in our best American nurseries, as they are called, which 
grow your Rhododendrons and other flowering shrubs so well. Ifa 
number of young plants of this were put out in a sandy. fir-wood, 
under the shrubs and pines, as they grow in New Jersey, we should 
succeed at once. Your beautiful Trillium grandiflorum is usually 
seen here in a poor state ; but I have seen a plant in a shady position 
in a shrubbery, in rich, moist soil, quite two feet through and two 
feet high. 
I mention these things to show that the wild garden may even 
have advantages from the point of view of cultivation, Another 
Woodruft and Ivy. 
advantage is the facilities it affords us for enjoying representations of 
the vegetation of other countries. Here, for example, the poorest soil 
in the most neglected copse will grow a mixture of golden rods and 
asters, which will give us an aspect of vegetation everywhere seen in 
American woods in autumn, This to you may appear a very common- 
place delight ; but as we have nothing at all like it, it is welcome. 
Besides, we in this way get the golden rods and coarser asters out of 
the garden proper, in which they used to overrun the choicer plants, 
and where they did much to disgrace the mixed border. So, in like 
manner, you may, in New England or New Jersey, make wild gardens 
of such of our English flowers as you love. For example, the now 
numerous and very handsome varieties of our Primroses, Polyanthuses, 
and Oxlips would probably succeed better with you in moist places, in 
woods, or partially shaded positions, than in the open garden. There 
