158 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 



to make all the difference between a garden that is a 

 pleasure alike to the owner and to the plants that live in 

 it and a garden which is nothing but a perennial anxiety 

 and expense. For, if you build well at the start, your 

 money will come flowing back to you, multiplied, through 

 a thousand channels. Spend a little more — ever so little 

 more at the beginning, and you will be spending less and 

 less, making more and more, as the seasons go by. Put 

 a rare, valuable plant in ill-prepared, faulty ground; it 

 dies or dwindles; plant it well, in well-planned territory, 

 and it grows ever stronger and stouter from year to year, 

 yielding you younglings, and affording you perpetual 

 pleasure. In renewal-money, saddest of expenses, propei- 

 initial care will save you fortunes ; for, with proper 

 preparation of your ground, you will rarely need to fiU uj) 

 vacancies left by deplorable demises among your treasures. 

 Let my ideal bog-garden flow down converging slopes, 

 and fill a broad hollow. Let its sparse rocks be porous 

 and water-worn — either of light powdery tuff, or of the 

 gnarled, fretted mountain-limestone. Let its aspect have 

 a rich peace, untroubled by ambitious violent features, 

 pinnacles, bridges, uneasy, fussy adornments, Through 

 the middle, perhaps, among tangled thickets of Iris, a 

 stream may meander; but, for the most part, I incline to 

 the opinion that in a small place water had better be a 

 haunting pervasive influence than an actual visible force. 

 In my own gardens, flowing water serves its turn ; but as 

 a rule, it is difficult to look after, to keep clear of weeds and 

 leaves, to hold in its course. Nor is it of any effect unless 

 the stream be a big one. And in any case water, running 

 or staying, is an uncommonly hard and expensive servant 

 to control. Therefore, for general advice, I should say, 

 let there be abundant moisture, yet none to see. But, 

 of course, if space and water be at your disposal — space 

 and such unhusbanded fountains as bless our Northern 



