6o 
CHILDREN'S GARDENS 
ii 
cowslip, associated in all children’s minds with 
a sweetish, sickly-tasting tea, whose flavour 
was greatly improved by being drunk out of 
dolls’ cups, and with round golden balls of sadly 
fleeting beauty, manufactured by hanging all 
the little heads on strings and knotting tight 
together. When “yellow cowslips gild the 
level green ” in the parks and fields, they ought 
to be brightening the grassy miniature lawns of 
every wild garden. 
I will only tell you of two more yellow 
flowers which bloom well all through the spring. 
One is daisy - shaped, and called leopard’s 
bane, or Doronicum. There is a wild kind, 
which is pretty, but apt to become a trouble in 
a small garden, as it spreads quickly; a tall 
garden variety called Harpur Crewe, which 
lasts on into the summer; and, best of all, a 
dwarf one called austriacum, which sometimes 
begins to send up buds so early in January that 
they get nipped by frost. The other plant is 
called Alyssum saxatile, only a few inches high, 
with shining gold heads of small cross-shaped 
flowers. It is very easy to grow, and on a 
warm spring day it is a pleasure to watch the 
bees busily “improving the shining hour” at 
its countless little honey-cells. 
You must not expect at first to have all or 
even a quarter of these many flowers in your 
