MARCH 83 



flesh-colour and a good pink, Leucojum vernuvi, with 

 its clear white flowers and polished dark-green leaves, 

 is one of the gems of early March ; and, flowering at 

 the same time, no flower of the whole year can show a 

 more splendid and sumptuous colour than the purple 

 of Iris reticulata. Varieties have been raised, some 

 larger, some nearer blue, and some reddish purple, but 

 the type remains the best garden flower. Iris stylosa, 

 in sheltered nooks open to the sun, when well estab- 

 lished, gives flower from November till mid-April, the 

 strongest rush of bloom being about the third week in 

 March. It is a precious plant in our southern counties, 

 delicately scented, of a tender and yet full lilac-blue. 

 The long ribbon-like leaves make handsome tufts, and 

 the sheltered place it needs in our climate saves the 

 flowers from the injury they receive on their native 

 windy Algerian hills, where they are nearly always torn 

 into tatters. 



What a charm there is about the common Dog- 

 tooth Violet ; it is pretty ever3rwhere, in borders, in the 

 rock-garden, in all sorts of corners. But where it looks 

 best with me is in a grassy place strewn with dead 

 leaves, under young oaks, where the garden joins the 

 copse. This is a part of the pleasure-ground that has 

 been treated with some care, and has rewarded thought 

 and labour with some success, so that it looks less as if 

 it had been planned than as if it might have come 

 naturally. At one point the lawn, trending gently up- 

 ward, runs by grass paths into a rock-garden, planted 



