SOME TALK ABOUT WILD GAEDENS. 



51 



ground (an old one for choice), should be found for it. Otherwise the 

 beauty attending maturity, the sense of repose arising from mere age in 

 vegetation, is for many years absent, however many other beauties may 

 be present. The problems of its construction and its furnishing are 

 indeed completely diflt'erent, according as we have or have not at our 

 disposal, upon or surrounding the proposed site, some existing vegetation, 

 whether of matured Conifers, shrubs or woodlands. Even old hedgerows 

 may for the purpose be made useful, and the round of them on the inner 

 sides of a field of a few acres may give a sufficient background for a wide 

 and varied belt of natural wild garden. 



If no such vegetation be already present to serve for background or 

 framework we have the three alternatives of either planting such, whether 

 Conifers or woodlands, in specimens already of some size — or of planting 

 the same in small size and waiting years for the result ; or of making our 

 wild garden wholly of lowlier subjects without background or enclosing 

 girdle. But in this last case the loss is generally great, and should, if 

 may be, be avoided. 



A thin wood, or a thinned wood, so thin that plentiful light and air 

 are admitted, and that many large spaces are found there, free from the 

 roots of trees — a wide glade in the park or elsewhere — the open side of a 

 w^ood or covert, or an extensive clearing in it — an old common ready 

 furnished in parts with brake, briar, and bracken, and seamed perhaps 

 with watercourses — even wide disused lanes or manor ways — almost any 

 piece of wild ground, indeed, containing already something of natural 

 beauty, is suitable for our purpose. Of course in any case it must be 

 guarded against rabbits and marauders, human and other. 



When no other spot is available an ordinary field, preferably of a few 

 acres, may be made available ; the whole field not being necessarily thus 

 used, only a vnld and irregular belt round the inside of its hedgerows. 

 In time, by judicious planting and felling, the hedges may be incorporated 

 in the garden to all appearances, while remaining an impenetrable fence. 



If the centre of such a field be retained for pastoral or other purposes 

 and fenced off, it is well that the zone of planting should be ^yide enough, 

 say 100 feet in its narrowest part, to enable a fairly broad track or path 

 to be carried through it or along it. The path is then remote enough 

 from either boundary to induce some sense of privacy. 



One sees hundreds of sites for a vdld garden such as I have described 

 alongside most of the railways of the country, and conspicuously so in 

 the Home Counties. 



It will not often, I think, be desirable to reshape or reform the ground 

 selected for a wild garden. For unless very skilfully done a sense of the 

 artificial is more likely to result than any very solid betterment. But if 

 the contrary view obtain, we cannot, I think, do better than imitate the 

 style of Mr. Milner in laying out ground, and which may not unfitly be 

 described as a rolling "ground-swell." 



In what I have just said I have been thinking of wild gardens of some 

 size and importance, and it must, I think, be admitted that some degree of 

 extent is necessary to get completely satisfactory results. 



As to paths in the wild garden ; in hard soils, or in places lying high, 

 they may often be dispensed with, particularly if the garden be little 



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