14 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



February, 1910 



These and many other hardy orchids may 

 be procured from English specialists in hardy 

 perennials and, strange as it may seem, from 

 some of the Dutch bulb dealers who print 

 catalogues in English. It is impossible to 

 grow orchids under ordinary garden con- 

 ditions. They will thrive only in bog or 

 rock gardens or in moist woods. Americans 

 should begin with American species, of which 

 there are fifty-six, the most desirable being 

 the showy lady's slipper (Cypripedium spec- 

 tabile). To this the English give the 

 place of honor in their bog gardens as it is 

 undoubtedly the loveliest hardy orchid in 

 the world. 



THE CHARM OF PITCHER PLANTS 



Some day I propose to buy a New England 

 farm with a sphagnum bog on it, just for the 

 pleasure of growing hardy orchids and pitcher 

 plants. Not that I care to study their 

 insectivorous habits very deeply, but I enjoy 

 them socially. They are such strange, 

 unique creatures that at first they seem to 

 defy all the laws of man and botany. But 

 our Northern sidesaddle flower (Sarracenia 

 purpurea) has a certain wild beauty both in 

 leaf and flower, and the Southern (S. fiava) 

 is undoubtedly the tallest and showiest of all. 

 Fortunately, it has proved hardy in a sphag- 

 num bog garden as far north as Massa- 

 chusetts. English bog gardens all have the 

 purple pitcher plant, but they do not seem 

 to know about the yellow one. 



A LILY TEN FEET HIGH 



The finest lilies for American bog gardens 

 are Lilium superbum and Canadense, of 

 which I give an account on page 36. I 

 saw only one thing to beat them in Eng- 

 land. The summit of an Englishman's 

 ambition is to grow the giant lily of the 

 Himalayas which has been well named Lilium 

 giganteum. I am sorry that I must show 



The giant lily of the Himalayas (Lilium giganteum), 

 with white trumpets six inches or more long and 

 eight to twenty on a stalk 



this as a greenhouse specimen, especially 

 as the leaves look rather flabby. How 

 ever, the picture shows the white trumpets, 

 like those of an Easter lily, but larger 

 and more numerous than on any lily you 

 ever saw or heard of. Imagine a lily ten feet 

 high, bearing twenty flowers, each nearly a 

 foot long! It is very rarely that the dimen- 

 sions I have named are attained in England, 

 but a lily only six feet high, with only twelve 

 trumpets which are only six inches long, is 

 enough to take one's breath away. 



Another feature which adds greatly to the 

 interest of the giant lily is its broad heart- 

 shaped leaves. I venture to say that you 

 never saw a lily without long, narrow leaves 

 and parallel veins. Indeed, parallel venation 

 is one of the characters that separate the 

 monocotyledons from the dicotyledons, the 

 two biggest branches in the vegetable king- 

 dom, so far as flowering plants are concerned. 

 Yet this giant lily has broad leaves with 

 netted veins — a great rarity indeed. 



It is almost a "moral certainty" that any 

 Englishman who owns a bit of moist peaty 

 land will try to grow Lilium giganteum. I 

 was told that at Lord Walsingham's it "grows 

 like a weed," attaining magnificent size and 

 even sowing its own seed. But nobody 

 expects to have such luck as this and nobody 

 pretends to tell other people just how to 

 grow it. All agree that it must have bog 

 garden conditions, i. e., peat, shade for the 

 lower part of the stems, and a never-failing 

 supply of moving moisture, but beyond that 

 all is experimental. It is essentially a 

 "sporting proposition," and nobody who 

 can afford $20 a dozen for the bulbs seems 

 to begrudge the price, for there is a chance 

 to make superb pictures with this giant lily 

 in a sheltered nook, surrounded by huge 

 rhododendrons and, perchance, a musical 

 little stream running past. 



FRAGRANCE IN THE BOG GARDEN 



The sound of running water and the frag- 

 rance of unseen flowers are two of the 

 subtlest charms any garden may have. I 

 cannot stop now to give a list of fragrant 

 flowers, but I saw two plants with fragrant 

 foliage in England, which I must describe. 



The first is sweet gale or bog myrtle (My- 

 rica Gale), which should not be confused 

 with our native bayberry or candleberry 

 {Myrica cerifera). "It is the only bush," 

 said Mr. Amos Perry to me, "that grows 

 with its feet under water all the time." It 

 is never a showy plant, as the flowers are 

 minute and borne in short, erect catkins; 

 but it is very pleasant to brush against the 

 foliage. When you grasp the leaves and 

 crush them in the hand, there is a feeling of 

 stickiness owing to the aromatic oil glands 

 on the under surface of the leaves. 



In great contrast to this bush is the Corsi- 

 can thyme, the smallest flowering plant cul- 

 tivated in gardens. I doubt if any plant in 

 the world has so powerful an odor in pro- 

 portion to its size. A full-grown plant is 

 only about half an inch across, and consists 

 of a rosette of leaves. It also has minute 

 purple flowers which I have not seen. The 

 fashion is to establish Corsican thyme in the 



The shining, leathery, undivided leaves of the hart's 

 tongue, a fern of the greatest interest. (See page 34) 



chinks of a wall or walk, on stepping stones 

 or wherever the foot may brush against it 

 without crushing it. If you reach down to 

 the ground and draw your thumb across 

 this midget it scents the air for several yards 

 in every direction. To raise such a plant 

 from seed must be quite a job, yet wherever 

 I saw it at all it seemed abundant, and I fancy 

 it self-sows when established. The plants 

 are offered by a well-known dealer in alpines, 

 in Geneva, Switzerland, at ten cents each, 

 and I should think a dime would just about 

 cover each plant. Corsican thyme is some- 

 times described under the name of Thymus 

 Corsicus, but the catalogues offer it as Mentha 

 Requieni, and, according to Bailey, the 

 proper name is Calamintha Requieni. 



EFFECTS WE CANNOT HAVE 



Our summers are too hot and dry for prim- 

 roses. Near the seashore the air is cool 

 and moist enough, but we shall never have 

 primroses by the million in our woodlands, 

 and we have no conception of dozens of 

 alpine species which English amateurs tuck 

 away in rock and bog gardens. One of 

 the finest mass effects I saw was a colony 

 of Primula Japonica, about one hundred 

 plants, forming a ground-cover under azaleas. 

 It is hardy in our Northern states, but I 

 doubt if it would self-sow as it does in 

 England. Many of the primroses have 

 piercing crimson and purple tones, but 

 Primula Japonica is a good color in deep 

 shade. 



Musk is another plant which the English 

 can grow by the hundred or thousand as a 

 ground cover in bog gardens or beds of rhodo- 

 dendrons and azaleas. It is a dear old 

 plant, but there are much finer things for use 

 on a large scale. We need not weep because 

 we cannot grow it well in quantity. 



Gunnera, pampas grass and flame flower 

 (or torch lily) are the only other plants of the 

 first importance in English bog gardens that 

 are not hardy in our Northern states. 



AMERICAN EFFECTS 



On the other hand, it is highly probable 

 that we shall be able to develop an Ameri- 

 can type of bog garden which will be very 

 charming, for we have a finer set of orchids 

 and insectivorous plants, and we have many 

 fine species of Ericaceae, some of which 

 are named on page 32. 



