THE GREATER BOG-PLANTS 185 



will turn your wretched garden into an ell with an 

 initial H. 



If you have unlimited space at your disposal, and high 

 bold corners, you will not, of course, omit the Gimneras 

 and the Pampas-Grass. Nothing is more magnificent than 

 a big old clump of Pampas, drooping and weeping and 

 luxuriating over a lake, from some lofty precipitous point 

 of rock-work falling sheer towards the water. It is so I have 

 it in my Old Garden, and for once, the actual makes 

 a model for the ideal. The effect is splendid and mar- 

 moreal. The Gimneras do not waken my zeal to the 

 same extent. They are immense — ' a formes architectu- 

 rales ' — like gigantic Rhubarbs, swollen in a nightmare. 

 Their hardiness hovers on the edge of doubt ; they like a 

 little sifted ash for protection in winter ; and, altogether, 

 if I am to tell the truth, I myself admire the great cut- 

 leaved Rhubarb, Rheum palmatum, with its towering 

 spires of crimson blossom, to the umbrella-like enormous- 

 ness of the Gunnera-foliage, concealing their stodgy dull 

 spikes of greenish-yellow flowers, like gigantic bottle- 

 cleaners. On the other hand, while Gunnera scahra and 

 Gunnera manicata are so colossal as to have no place in 

 any garden that cannot be measured by the mile, Cktnnera 

 magellanica is so minute as hardly to be visible to the 

 naked eye, and certainly is no more covetable than the 

 common Coltsfoot, though, possibly, less of a pest. 



Of foliage plants for the lake-side, though, or the big 

 bog, there is nothing to surpass the Rodgersias — the old 

 podophylla, with wide, bristly, five-cleft leaves, bright and 

 glossy, ranging from emerald green through every shade of 

 red, bronze and purple. The plant runs freely and forms 

 a fine sheet of shining leafage on a slope — as I saw it once 

 clothing a whole hillside in the Hokkaido, though 

 its flower spikes, just rising above the leaves on their two- 

 feet stalwart stems, are not of any great decorative 



