THE BEDDING FASHION 269 



of things to plant anywhere, whether only to fill up 

 a border or as a detached group, if I placed the 

 things myself, carefully exercising what power of dis- 

 crimination I might have acquired, it looked fairly 

 right, but that if I left it to one of my garden people 

 (a thing I rarely do) it looked all n,ohow, or like bed- 

 ding in the worst sense of the word. 



Even the better ways of gardening do not wholly 

 escape the debasing influence of fashion. Wild garden- 

 ing is a delightful, and in good hands a most desirable, 

 pursuit, but no kind of gardening is so difficult to do 

 well, or is so full of pitfalls and of paths of peril. 

 Because it has in some measure become fashionable, 

 and because it is understood to mean the planting of 

 exotics in wild places, unthinking people rush to the 

 conclusion that they can put any garden plants into any 

 wild places, and that that is wild gardening. I have seen 

 woody places that were already perfect with their own 

 simple charm just muddled and spoilt by a reckless 

 planting of garden refuse, and heathy hillsides already 

 sufficiently and beautifully clothed with native vegeta- 

 tion made to look lamentably silly by the planting of 

 a nurseryman's mixed lot of exotic Conifers. 



In my own case, I have always devoted the 

 most careful consideration to any bit of wild gar- 

 dening I thought of doing, never allowing myself 

 to decide upon it till I felt thoroughly assured that 

 the place seemed to ask for the planting in contem- 

 plation, and that it would be distinctly a gain in 



