A GARDEN DIARY 131 
walk that crosses the upper part of our copse. 
Whether it will endure the amount of shade 
that it will find there remains to be seen. 
It is a sun-lover by nature, like most of its 
tribe, but its growth is so redundant that 
a little curtailment of it will do it no great 
harm. Though less spreading, it requires almost 
more room than the verbascums, for, if the 
space it covers is less, it is a true biennial, 
never failing in my experience to flower the 
year after it is sown. With Verbascum olymp- 
icum this is not so. There are some here 
at this moment that were sown three years 
ago, and have not yet flowered. They will 
do so no doubt this year, and with that event 
the cycle of their existence ends. The worst 
is that the gap they leave when they die is 
large; moreover, as in the case of foxgloves, 
the black stump is both an ugly object in 
itself, and a difficult one to get rid of. When 
are we to possess a really good perennial 
foxglove I wonder? There is a_ perennial 
yellow one, but it is a poor thing, hardly 
worthy of its name. Perennial verbascums are 
also few in number, most of the family showing 
a more or less aloe-like fashion of flowering. 
In their case one is able to console oneself. 
The imagination grows a trifle giddy in fact 
at the thought of every mullein one has seen 
