THE WOOD 21 



cleared that would be large enough to be sunny through- 

 out the greater part of the day. This was for Cistuses. 

 It is one of the compensations for gardening on the 

 poorest of soils that these delightful shrubs do well 

 with only the preparation of digging up and loosening 

 the sand, for my soil is nothing better. The kinds 

 that are best in the woody landscape are C. laurifoUus 

 and C. cyprius ; laurifoUus is the hardiest, cyfrius 

 rather the more beautiful, with its three-and-a-half - 

 inch wide flowers of tenderest white with a red-purple 

 blotch at the base of each petal. Its growth, also, is 

 rather more free and graceful. It is the kind usually 

 sold as ladaniferus, and flowers in July. C. laurifoUus 

 is a bush of a denser habit ; it bears an abundance 

 of bloom rather smaller than that of C. cyprius, and 

 without the coloured blotch. But when it grows old 

 and some of its stems are borne down and lie along 

 the ground, the habit changes and it acquires a free 

 pictorial character. These two large-growing Cistuses 

 are admirable for wild planting in sunny wood edges. 

 The illustrations (pp. i8 and 19) show their use, not only 

 in their own ground, but by the sides of the grassy 

 ways and the regions where the wood paths leave the 

 lawn. 



The sheltered, sunny Cistus clearing has an under- 

 growth of wild heaths that are native to the ground, 

 but a very few other Heaths' are added, namely, Enca 

 ciliata and the Cornish Heath ; and there is a fine 

 patch at the joining of two of the little grassy paths 

 of the white form of the Irish Heath {Menziesia, or 

 Daboecia polijolia). 



