SPRING IN THE GARDEN 137 



Few of us, indeed, but can conjure up some 

 such remembrance, and though every spring they 

 still crowd in myriads round our steps in copse 

 and moor and hedgerow, none seem to us quite 

 so fair as the primroses of the days that are gone. 

 Only on the coal-measures, sometimes, April brings 

 no primroses, and though we may try to coax them 

 against their will to stay with us, as often as not 

 it is a forlorn hope. Better to forego them 

 altogether than to see them sicken and pine. 

 Naturally enough the gardener's art has tried to 

 better Nature, and we have hybrids of bright and 

 beautiful colouring, but their place is in the garden 

 proper. As in the coppice and the land, so in the 

 borderland which comes between the garden and 

 the wild ; no tone accords so well with the light- 

 some green of tender leafage as the rare pale tint 

 of the common primrose. 



But the primrose, winsome as the flower is in 

 the copse and wayside bank, is in a sense over- 

 shadowed by the beautiful variations that we 

 treasure as good garden plants. Several groups 

 are in existence, the richly coloured varieties 

 which were first raised I believe by Mr. Anthony 

 Waterer, and the "Bunch primroses" that we 

 associate with Miss Jekyll's, garden at Munstead. 



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