204 
NATURE NOTES. 
A VICARAGE GARDEN IN NORTH LANCASHIRE. 
ERHAPS a simple description of some of the more 
noticeable features of a vicarage garden on the skirts 
of the lake district may have its attraction for the 
readers of Nature Notes. Imagine, then, a modest- 
looking garden of about an acre, consisting of mingled lawns,, 
shrubberies, and unconventional flower-beds and rockeries, with 
a lively little stream in one place gathered into an ornamental 
piece of water, surrounding on all sides an old-fashioned 
irregular-gabled vicarage. There are many pleasant undula- 
tions and windings following the course of the stream, which 
runs the whole length of this very unusual kind of garden. 
There is no formal planting anywhere. It is a garden which, 
as an artist once remarked, seems to have grown after its own 
fancy, and had all its own way. There are several lawns very 
varied in their character, and none of any extent, and shrubs 
and clumps of trees with uncultivated bits, all containing one or 
more plants of exceptional interest, and forming miniature land- 
scapes. In a word, the remark has been very often made that 
there is a peculiar fascination about this rustic botanic garden 
seldom experienced elsewhere. 
One would often feel disposed to think that flowers are 
endowed with some natural sense of enjoyment and of a happy 
prosperity, whenever they find themselves in a spot that visibly 
suits them. Here they continually sow themselves and run 
wild with evident enjoyment, seeking out and taking possession 
of every favourable spot. How else should it happen that a 
score of indigenous flowers grow, increase and multiply in wild 
profusion in my garden as, within my experience, they seldom 
grow elsewhere ? I have not planted, for instance, more than 
a few osmundas, yet these fine plants have sprung up unin- 
vited wherever they are pleased to select a new home, and some 
of them attain a height of nearly five feet. The impatiens, 
transplanted from the neighbouring Duddon, the woodruff from 
the copses, the shining crane’s bill, and a white-flowered Herb 
Robert from Wordsworth’s Rydal garden, have grown up in 
many places, forming a rich background or a thick carpet, or 
clothing the walls with beautiful Sedum album, and many othcy 
sedums and saxifrages, just where they seem most welcome. So 
with the dusky crane’s bill, the Geranium sanguineum, and others 
too numerous to mention, but quite at home in the vicarage 
garden. Sometimes varieties of ferns, of the origin of which in 
this locality I have not an idea, have suddenly greeted my eyes ; 
as the Polysiiclium diviso-lohatum acutum," a very handsome plant, 
has appeared at the back of a shrubbery, of which no history can 
be traced. Indeed, polystichums of many species and varieties 
abound and multiply freely. A singular example of this riotous 
enjoyment of plant-life has occurred in the case of Urtica 
