58 A GARDEN DIARY 
greens is a constant surprise when one comes to 
collect them, and the fact that there should be 
so many speaks volumes for a climate that we 
are none of us ever weary of abusing. Apart 
from absolute rock-plants, nearly all of which are 
evergreen, there are a number of others, which 
rarely or never lose their leaves, and whose 
presence saves banks and hollows like these from 
the reproach of bareness, and further takes away 
—certainly ought to take away—all excuses for 
visitations from that Tool of the Destroyer, the 
pitchfork. Of such plants none are better than 
certain campanulas, including our own hair-bells, 
both the blue and the white. Wood-sorrels 
again are excellent in a shady place, or, for a 
sunnier one, there is their energetic cousin Oxalis 
floribunda, in this soil the most undaunted of 
colonisers, growing all the winter. ‘“ Creeping 
Jenny” again, and “ Blue-eyed Mary,” delightful 
things with delightful names, will cover as much 
space as they are allowed to do. Of the more 
easily grown forget-me-nots there are at least 
four kinds—palustris, for planting close to the 
water, or in it; dissitiflora, happy all the summer, 
so long as it gets a little shade; sylvatica and 
alpestris, growing anywhere, and everywhere. 
Epimediums, again, are excellent, though apt to 
get a little rusty in the winter. So is Tellina 
grandiflora, an unwisely named plant, since its 
strength lies, not in its flowers, but its leaves. 
