MY WILD GARDEN. 
189 
MY WILD GARDEN. 
HAVE been asked to give a few particulars of the way 
in which I have grown for some years many of the 
rarer species of our flora. I do so with pleasure, as 
if I can help any one to go and do the same I shall be 
amply repaid. The object with which this may be done is two- 
fold — either as flowers, regarded for their beauty and rural 
associations, or with the aim of ascertaining whether certain 
species change by cultivation, keep their characters, or diverge 
towards others. For myself, I must admit I wished to combine 
the two. 
As to beauty, anyone who has seen a mass of Potcntilla vupcs- 
tris in full flower will not readily forget it, or of Echium plantagineum 
(Channel Islands), the latter flowering from June to September. 
Then even with the soberer-coloured sedges, what a beautiful 
object is a waving mass of Cypcrus longus (Isle of Wight) ! 
Of course space is a great factor, but with even a garden in 
the centre of a town I have had between two and three hundred 
•of our rarer and critical species growing, and mostly doing well. 
I began by leaving one part just as it was with the ordi- 
nary garden soil ; a second piece I mixed with Redhill sand 
(that known as No. 2), in the proportion of one half ; a smaller 
portion with two-thirds of this sand, for the Norfolk and Suf- 
folk plants of the sandy “ breck-lands ” of those counties, such 
as A rtemisia campestris, Medicago falcata, M. sylvestris, Se c. Another 
portion with powered and broken chalk, for such plants as 
Lathyvus hirsufus, Oxytropis uralensis, Thalictrum, Veronica spicata, Sec. 
Then I dug out a small pond, lined it with rough bricks and 
cemented them over, working in round the edge flower pots with 
the bottoms left open, but the top parts concealed by the cement. 
Into these pots I put such plants as Caitha radicans, Carex 
Buxbaumii, C. salina, C. Ehrhartiana, Hierochloe borealis, See. ; around 
this very small pond I dug out the ground one foot deep, filling 
it in again with one-third lumps of plastic clay, one-third sharp 
sand, and one ordinary soil. The overflow of the pond found 
its way into this swamp, and here Cypcrus longus, Sonchus palustvis, 
Carex tomenlosa, Sisyrinchium angusti folium, Mentha pubescens and 
alopecuroides, Selinum Carvifolia, Sec., grew well. 
In the pond itself Potamogeton lanceolatus grew so well that in 
one year I dried two hundred examples off one plant of it, and 
distributed them. P.fluitans and others also found a home here. 
In the drier parts of the swamp the remarkable differences 
between the first leaves of CEnanthe pimpinelloides and CE. “ silai- 
folia ” could be well seen ; those of the first named prostrate, 
and growing like the spokes of a wheel, with their apexes all 
following the circumference ; the latter when emerging from 
the ground quite upright, straight, and falling over in a week 
or so. 
On the drier parts of the ordinary soil I planted Hiera- 
