GARDENING IN THE WESTEKN HIGHLANDS. 



53 



winter, and I have never happened to come across Schizostylis coccinea 

 anywhere else equal to what I grow here in November and up to the 

 beginning of December ; one can see its masses of dazzling scarlet on 

 my terrace from a boat sailing about in the bay. 



Tigridias live out all the year, and some seasons they even seed 

 themselves profusely, and I have seen the seedlings coming up thick 

 in the gravel walks. In a good July I have seen the tea-roses on my 

 lower terrace wall almost as good as on the Riviera, but the hybrid 

 perpetuals do decidedly less well here, I think, than they do, for instance, 

 in Hertfordshire, and florists' anemones and ranunculuses and also the 

 Moutan Paeony have so far nearly defied me. On some of my lower walls 

 I grow the Correas, and C. alba blooms the whole winter through, and 

 is most charming. Callistemons (the scarlet bottle-brush) flower, and 

 Cassia corymbosa, Habrothamnus elegans, and Bomneya seem quite 

 happy; Abelia quinata, Lapagerias, and Mandevilla suavcolens are 

 growing, but have not yet bloomed with me. 



Just one more remark, and that is about our rainfall. This is 

 supposed to be a very wet part of the country, but according to my 

 gardener, who keeps his rain-gauge very carefully, we had under 

 55 inches in 1907, whereas there are places in Britain where the fall is 

 130 and even 140 inches. 



