February, 1910 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



13 



consider the following plants which have 

 smaller individual flowers but are notoriously 

 splendid in mass: 



* Asclepias incarnata. — *Caltha palustris. — 

 *Chelone Lyoni.-~*Lobeli<i cardinalis. — * Monarda 

 didyma. — *Myosotis palustris. 



But, lest this seem too theoretical let me 

 give the main features of the best bog garden 

 I saw in England. Here are the largest col- 

 onies which Sir Henry Yorke has established, 

 and I have arranged the plants in the order 

 of their bloom. His main pictures are made 

 with: 



Azaleas, May. — Rhododendrons, June. — Japan 

 iris, June. — Golden-banded iris, June. — *Canadian 

 lily, July. — Japanese primrose, July. — fTorch lily, 

 July to September. — *Purple loosestrife, August. — 

 fPampas grass, September, October. — Bamboos 

 (foliage). 



GRASS AND FERN EFFECTS 



I have before me an English catalogue 

 which offers fifty species of grasses, sedges, 

 rushes and hardy bamboos, suitable for wet 

 places. A good many of them are variegated 

 with white and yellow and these my taste 

 would reject. There is beauty enough in the 

 green- leaved grasses, especially the bamboos, 

 particularly the one for which I proposed the 

 name Riviere's bamboo, viz., Phyllostachys 

 viridi-glaucescens. This is noted for its 

 great, billowy masses. Mr. Lynch, at 

 Cambridge, told me it is the greatest cold- 

 resister among the bamboos, and the best 

 for large mass at the waterside. 



New to me was the perennial wild rice (Ziz- 

 ania latifolia), which makes a magnificent 

 specimen plant, growing to the height of 

 a man and having a bolder and wider leaf 

 than the commoner species (Z. aquatica), 

 which is an annual. 



Somehow I failed to see that well-known 

 British plant, the blue-lyme grass (Elymus 

 arenarius), which is noted for its blue-gray 

 foliage. It makes clumps about four feet 

 high and some gar- 

 deners think it looks 

 best if the flowers are 

 removed. 



As to ferns, the bog 

 garden is just the 

 place for them, since 

 they need plenty of 

 water and shade for 

 their grandest devel- 

 opment. I must have 

 seen two dozen 

 species in English 

 bog gardens, and I 

 know that fifty are 

 available, but for use 

 on a great scale I saw 

 nothing better than 

 our own cinnamon 

 and royal ferns. I 

 wish, however, that 

 my friends would 

 experiment on a 

 small scale with the 



hart's tongue fern, which I have described 

 on page 40. 



CREEPERS AND GROUND COVERS 



Since Sir Henry Yorke's bog garden is 

 naturally composed of peaty soil he could 

 choose nothing more appropriate for cover- 

 ing the ground beneath shrubs than heaths 

 of all kinds. These ericas and dabcecias 

 are evergreen, and have a considerable variety 

 in color and season of bloom. 



Another ground cover which he uses in 

 great quantity is London pride (Saxifraga 

 umbrosa), which I have often praised for 

 its evergreen rosettes and its airy masses of 

 dainty, white flowers. Most of the famous 

 saxifrages cultivated in England are out of the 

 question for America, but London pride is a 

 British wild flower which I hope some day to 

 see naturalized in American woods, growing 

 by the million and furnishing an evergreen 

 carpet to delight eye and foot the year round. 



He also showed me three pretty little creep- 

 ers of which I must say a word. The first 

 is a midget called Gunnera Magellanica. 

 You would never guess its relationship to the 

 species with the titanic leaves. It is a lovely 

 plant for the margin of a pool. It takes to 

 water like a duck, and it is amusing to see 

 this hardy little Patagonian creeper ride over 

 the surface of a miniature lake. 



The second, pictured on page 12, is the 

 bog pimpernel (Anagallis tenella), a British 

 plant related to the "poor-man's weather- 

 glass." It bears myriads of tiny pink flowers, 

 and is also admirable for its slender stems 

 and the beauty of its paired leaves. 



Third is the ivy-leaved bellflower (Wah- 

 lenbergia hederacea) , which bears a great 

 many pale bluish-purple flowers, not half 

 an inch long, in summer and autumn. The 

 blossoms droop in the bud, stand nearly erect 

 when in full bloom, and often droop again 

 when in fruit. It is as innocent and appeal- 



* All the plants marked * 

 in this article are American 

 wild flowers. 



t The plants marked t in 

 this article are not hardy in 

 our northern states. 



Sensitive fern in the foreground. 



A inound of Saxijraga ptitaia 

 to America 



ing as a baby, with its thread-like branches 

 and its diminutive leaves that mimic those of 

 the ivy. This, also, is a British plant. 



WII.DFLOWER EFFECTS 



This loyalty to the native wild flowers is 

 an admirable trait in English country gentle- 

 men. In the same spirit country gentlemen 

 in America will some day see to it that their 

 neglected woods are carpeted with wild- 

 flowers by the ten thousand as they were in 

 the days of the Indian. One man will plant 

 1,000 bulbs of Jack-in-the-pulpit* at a cost of 

 $35. Another will make a hit with the swamp 

 pink (Helonias bullata*) . And perhaps some 

 one will discover the possibilities of the dainty 

 little star flower (Trientalis Americana*). 



In short, every wildrlower that grows in 

 damp woods should be lovingly studied by 

 some one who has the patience to propa- 

 gate it and help it establish a good-sized 

 colony, for only when we grow a flower in a 

 large mass, in its right environment, can we 

 discover its true worth and meaning. 



We must not hesitate to apply this prin- 

 ciple to large, coarse plants that we ordin- 

 arily think of as weeds. For example, the 

 viper's bugloss (Echium vulgare) is a draggle- 

 tail weed along dusty roads, but at Iver 

 Heath I saw it glorified almost beyond recog- 

 nition by the easy magic of bog planting. A 

 single plant had attained the enormous height 

 of four or five feet and the flowers were about 

 an inch long. You can tell at once that it 

 belongs to the borage family, for the flowers 

 are reddish purple at first, but change to a 

 bright blue and are borne in numerous one- 

 sided spikes. It blossoms all summer, and 

 at the time I saw it was a prodigy of bloom. 



HARDY ORCHIDS FOR BOG GARDENS 



I was eager to see the European or- 

 chids having had some inkling of their 

 glories from great picture books like "Hortus 

 Eystettensis." There 

 are thirty-six of them 

 native to Great 

 Britain. I judge 

 that the showiest 

 is the old ori- 

 ginal lady's slipper 

 {Cyprepediiim Cal- 

 ceolus), a brown and 

 yellow beauty that is 

 almost extinct in 

 Britain. Second in 

 showiness, I suppose, 

 is the great or fra- 

 grant orchis (Haben- 

 aria conopsea) a rosy 

 purple flower, which 

 is common in the wild 

 throughout Great 

 Britain and blooms 

 all summer. Another 

 famous orchid is the 

 spotted orchis (Orchis 

 macula la), which 

 bears in June lilac 

 flowers spotted with 

 purple, while the 

 Both native leaves are green spot- 

 ted with brown. 



in the background 



