CHAPTER XVI 



PLANTS FOR POOR SOILS 



The natural soil of my heathy hilltop is so exces- 

 sively poor and sandy that it has obliged me, in a 

 way, to make a special study of plants that will do 

 fairly well with the least nutriment, and of all sorts 

 of ways of meeting and overcoming this serious diffi- 

 culty in gardening. It is some compensation that 

 the natural products of the upper ten acres of my 

 ground — Heath and Bracken, Whortleberry, fine 

 grasses and brilliant mosses below, and above them 

 a now well-grown copse of Birch and Holly, Oak, 

 Chestnut, and Scotch Fir — are exactly what I like 

 best in a piece of rough ground ; indeed I would 

 scarcely exchange my small bit of woodland, especially 

 after some years of watching and guiding in the way 

 it should go, with any other such piece that I can 

 think of. 



The main paths through this woodland space 

 are broad grassy ones kept mown ; they enable one 

 to get about with perfect ease among the trees, and 

 being fairly wide, about fifteen feet, they incite one to 

 a broad and rather large treatment of the tree-groups 

 near them. But there are smaller paths about four 



179 



