164 WOOD AND GARDEN 



What a precious winter flower is the yellow Jasmine 

 (Jasminum nudiflorum). Though hard frost spoils the 

 flowers then expanded, as soon as milder days come 

 the hosts of buds that are awaiting them burst into 

 bloom. Its growth is so free and rapid that one has 

 no scruple about cutting it freely ; and great branching 

 sprays, cut a yard or more long, arranged with branches 

 of Alexandrian Laurel or other suitable foliage — such 

 as Andromeda or Gaultheria — are beautiful as room 

 decoration. 



Christmas Roses keep on flowering bravely, in spite 

 of our light soil and frequent summer drought, both 

 being unfavourable conditions; but bravest of all is 

 the blue Algerian Iris {Iris stylosa), flowering freely as 

 it does, at the foot of a west wall, in all open weather 

 from November till April. 



In the rock-garden at the edge of the copse the 

 creeping evergreen Polygala ChaviceUixiis is quite at 

 home in beds of peat among mossy boulders. Where 

 it has the ground to itself, this neat Kttle shrub makes 

 close tufts only fom* inches or five inches high, its 

 wiry branches being closely set with neat, dark-green, 

 box-hke leaves; though where it has to struggle for 

 life among other low shrubs, as may often be seen in 

 the Alps, the branches elongate, and will run bare for 

 two feet or three feet to get the leafy end to the light. 

 Even now it is thickly set with buds and has a few 

 expanded flowers. This bit of rock-garden is mostly 

 planted with dwarf shrubs — Skimmia, Bog-myrtle, 



