14 COLOUR SCHEMES 



picture of flower-beauty in the late summer and 

 autumn and till near the end of October. The dark, 

 strong foliage makes the best possible setting for the 

 Lilies, and gives each group of them its fullest value. 

 Another, narrower path, more to the east, is called the 

 Fern walk, because, besides the general growth of 

 Bracken that clothes the whole of the wood, there are 

 groups of common hardy Ferns in easy patches, 

 planted in such a way as to suggest that they grew 

 there naturally. The Male Fern, the beautiful Dilated 

 Shield Fern, and Polypody are native to the ground, 

 and it was easy to place these, in some cases merely 

 adding to a naturally grown tuft, so that they look 

 quite at home. Lady Fern, Blechnum and Osmunda, 

 and Oak and Beech Ferns have been added, the 

 Osmunda in a depression that collects the water from 

 any storms of rain. Later it was found that these 

 wood-path edges offered suitable places for groups 

 of the Willow Gentian (G. asclepiadea), and it was 

 rather largely planted. It delights in a cool place 

 in shade or half-shade, and when in September so 

 many flowers are over and garden plants in general are 

 showing evidence of fatigue and exhaustion, it is a 

 pleasant thing to come upon a group of the arching 

 sprays of this graceful and quite distinctive plant 

 with its bright blue flowers an inch and a half long 

 set in pairs in the axils of the willow-like leaves. 



At the beginning of all these paths I took some pains 

 to make the garden melt imperceptibly into the wood, 

 and in each case to do it a different way. Where this 

 path begins the lawn ends at a group of Oak, Holly, 



