154 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 



CHAPTER VIII 



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The denizens of the bog-garden, large and small, have, 

 as a rule, one distinguishing tendency which sets them 

 far apart from the inhabitants of rock and crevice. For 

 their habit is, either not to thrive at all, or else to prosper 

 so outrageously that they eat you out of house and home. 

 And this second alternative, fortunately, is that usually 

 chosen by bog-plants, with the result that the bog-garden 

 is one of the enthusiasms easiest domains — giving him the 

 maximum of joy and glory, with the minimum of pain 

 and worry. Indeed, among the larger bog-plants there 

 are hardly any that can fairly be called difficult or ill- 

 tempered, but a large and opulent generosity of growth 

 is their prevailing characteristic. 



In the first place, about the building of the bog-garden. 

 The prime, dominant, inevitable, necessity of the bog- 

 garden is the most perfect drainage. For, the more 

 moisture a plant requires, the more imperiously does it 

 require that the moisture shall drain away and be renewed 

 incessantly. It is a fatal error to imagine that because a 

 plant enjoys growing with its feet in water, and its fibres 

 a-soak with perpetual wet, that therefore it cannot need 

 drainage. Too often the error is made, and the bog- 

 garden, built to retain the moisture, becomes a slough of 

 soured and soggy mud, in which the roots of all but the 

 most rampageous weeds turn sick and die. Drainage, 



