THE LADIES' FLORAL CABINET. 
293 
is possible, if only one forswears the digging of the sur¬ 
face. The whole space can be filled with bulbs and 
plants that thrive in such localities, until the earth is 
carpeted with green and alive with flowers. The white 
arabis, the trailing savin, the dwarf cotton-asters, the 
aubrietias, alyssums, fragrant Daphne c 7 ieorum , large 
white achilleas, narcissi, the white Japan anemone, and 
the superb Anemone fulgens, the clematises (of which 
more than a hundred desirable species can be chosen) are 
all suitable for growth in shrubberies. We must study 
the California woods for our models of work here. A 
week spent by the Russian river headwaters, or in the 
canons of the Gualala, will do more to teach one how 
to fill up the shrubberies with thrifty plants than a year 
of study of garden manuals. 
JMr. Falconer, of Massachusetts, some years ago de¬ 
scribed the way in which plants grow in the New England 
woods. “ I go into the woods in the springtime,” he 
writes, “and find them carpeted with dog’s-tooth violets, 
wood anemones (blue and purple), hepaticas, spring 
beauty, trilliums, blood-root, star-flowers, false Solomon’s- 
seal, gold thread, trailing arbutus, wild ginger, and a host 
of other pretty little flowers, all bright and gay, arising 
from their bed of decaying herbage and tree leaves ; and 
many of them are in perfection, too, before a tree has 
spread a leaf; and thus they glow and revel in their cosy 
bed, fed and sheltered by their tree friends. And early as 
the earliest, too, the outskirts of the woods and meadows 
with hosts of violets are painted blue and white, and 
speckled everywhere with bluets, or “ little innocents” as the 
children call them ; woodsias, tiny aspleniums and other 
ferns, are unfolding their fronds along the chinks among 
the stones; the common polypody is reaching over the 
blocks and boulders, and even the exposed rocks, with 
their rough and lichen-bearded faces aglow with vernal 
pride. Every nook and cranny among them, and little 
mat of earth upon them, is checkered with the flowery 
print of the Canadian columbine, the Virginia saxifrage 
and the glaucous corylus. But to the carpet. What can 
be prettier or more appropriate than the partridge-berry, 
the twin-flower, creeping winter-green, bear-berry, cow¬ 
berry, dwarf cornel, fringed polygonums, the common pip- 
sissewa, the spotted pipsissewa, the sombre-hued pyrola 
and smilax, and the bright and easily-grown club-moss ? 
Add to those such plants as winter aconite, Apennine 
anemone, creeping forget-me-not, and the like, together 
with a few of the most suitable kinds of the host of bul¬ 
bous ornamental plants we now possess, and our shrub¬ 
bery carpets may be replete with garden jewels ! ” 
All who remember and love the woods of New Eng¬ 
land will recognize the faithfulness of Mr. Falconer’s 
description, though it may at first seem that he expects 
impossibilities when he would naturalize all these in his 
home garden. It has been done often, and will be done 
again and again. In the upper Maryland woods the 
scene is far different; pipsissewas and bluets disappear, 
kalmias crowd the thickets, and the trilliums are of a 
darker hue. The wild-garden of the South or of the 
West would differ much from the wild-garden of New 
England. Here, in California, what garden, costly though 
it be, could help being made fairer by a copse of moun¬ 
tain azaleas, sheltered from burning heats and fed by 
living waters ? 
I have seen five things in the wild-flower line that are 
worth remembering a while, and each of them contains a 
lesson for those who would add nature’s fairest charm to 
their gardens. I have seen azaleas on the eastern slope 
of Mt. Howell, where redwoods formed the background. 
The copse was a hundred yards square, and one splendid 
mass of white and gold and rose-color such as no man 
ever saw in a garden, and such as one would do well to 
ride a hundred miles to see again. I have seen mountain 
lilies in Mariposa county growing in a hollow in the 
hills; hundreds and hundreds of tiger lilies swaying in 
the sunlight and taller than the manzanita bushes about 
them. I have seen the San Joaquin sand-plains, years 
ago, blue with larkspurs as far as the eye could reach— 
one sea of deep color, fringed with royal purple and gold 
and crimson and orange of other flowers. I have seen 
the wild-gardens of the heights near Shingletown, Shasta, 
and of the ridges beyond San Juan, Nevada county, and 
about Truckee—hollows snow-fed and grass-green all 
summer, and radiant with rich and manifold bloom. 
And, lastly, I have seen the sand dunes by the Pacific 
rosy-purple with abronias for miles, and golden with 
grindelias and blue with lupines. 
We must group and mass plants as nature does, in 
natural fringes and clusters and combinations, so’as to 
give distinct effects. In the midst of shrubbery we can 
plant crocuses, blue anemones, scillas, grape-hyacinths, 
tulips, and tigridias, to mingle naturally with our wild 
California brodeas and alliums. The Turk’s-cap lily, the 
white garden-lily, the martagon (lily of Palestine), and 
almost all of this most attractive group of plants are easily 
naturalized in the wild-garden. As for sunflowers, holly¬ 
hocks, cannas, gladioli—no better use can be found for 
them than massed where they need little attention. I 
spoke of the clematises, such as the fragrant virgin’s- 
bower ( Clematis virginiana), the Campaniflora, and the 
Clematis Montana, white-flowered and a very free grower- 
The Mediterranean species, C. Cirrhosa, flowers in win¬ 
ter here. Then there are the wind-flowers, or anemones, 
several times before alluded to ; and here one can hardly 
go astray. We can sow Alpine anemones over the grass ; 
we can plant the blue anemone on the sunny slopes, 
to bloom at Christmas, and the Anemone coronaria on 
sand-banks, and the Anemone sylvestris in shrubberies, 
and the blue and white Apennine anemones in copses and 
sheltered nooks, also the yellow Anemone ranunculoides. 
We can find a dozen or more varieties of the common 
garden anemones as easily at home here as mallows. 
The winter aconite, the rare old Christmas-rose, Helleborus 
niger, the tall and vigorous monk’shood, the tall perennial 
larkspurs, white and blue, the old-fashioned herbaceous 
peonies, even the large-flowered meadow-rue, are plants 
a wild-garden can use to great advantage. 
The subject deserves a far more extended treatment. 
There are wild plants fit for brooksides and marshes; 
others suitable for hedge-rows and fence-corners; and 
still others for wild ravines and rockeries. Intelligent 
skill devoted to the wild-garden can adapt plants to any 
position, and produce results quite impossible by any other 
