OF SHRUBS AND THEIR PLACING 9 



that Romneya Coulteri is an open-ground shrub, that it 

 becomes bored and lazy if grown under a wall, that only in 

 an unprotected place, swept by every wind and frost that 

 befalls, will the great Californian Poppy show the florifer- 

 ousness of its true character. Add to this a dressing of 

 lime rubble, and you will probably be picking blooms of 

 Romneya from June to November. And those blooms 

 are worth the winning — large and frail, built of the 

 thinnest crumpled white silk, almost diaphanous, like the 

 strange ghostly confections in a woman's summer hat, 

 with a central boss of golden stamens, and a warm little 

 delicate fragrance like that of the Rose Mardchale Niel. 

 In hopes of such a harvest my Romneyas are all to move 

 out into the open, and abundance of their root-cuttings 

 shall be struck, too, in spring, to repeat the experiment 

 in every situation. 



Of small deciduous shrubs for the rock-garden there 

 are many ; but few are fitted for a limited space. Cornus 

 and Rubus each give minute species. Cornus suecica, our 

 own rare native, I have never grown, nurseries always 

 sending me Cornus canadensis instead. This is a very 

 attractive tiny thing, which I myself have collected abun- 

 dantly in the Canadian Rockies. It grows about six 

 inches high, and runs freely in any quiet peaty place on 

 the rock-work. The whorled leaves are ovate, dark- 

 green ; the microscopic flowers look like the crowded 

 stamens to an apparent flower made up of four big, snow- 

 white bracts. Suecica is similar, but not nearly so 

 attractive, I believe. The two Brambles, delightful for 

 any peaty ledge or nook (the spiny, leafless-looking Rubus 

 austrdlis is not hardy ),are Rubus arcticus and Rubus pedatu^ 

 — the first an upright little shrub of six or eight inches, 

 with flowers of bright carmine — which are brighter still in 

 the fruit-bearing variety, arcticus fecundus; the second 

 a very pretty, palmate-leaved trailer, with large white 



