Page:The Wild Garden William Robinson.djvu/23

 bedding or any other system, follow one infinitely superior to any now practised, yet supplementing both, and exhibiting more of the varied beauty of hardy flowers than the most ardent admirer of the old style of garden ever dreams of. We may do this by naturalizing or making wild innumerable beautiful natives df many regions of the earth in our woods, wild and semi-wild places, rougher parts of pleasure grounds, etc., and in unoccupied places in almost every kind of garden.

I allude not to the wood and brake flora of any one alp or chain of alps, but to that which finds its home in the immeasurable woodlands that fall in furrowed folds from beneath the hoary heads of all the great mountain chains of the world, whether they rise from hot Indian plains or green European pastures. The Palm and sacred Fig, as well as the Wheat and the Vine, are separiated from the stemless plants that cushion under the snow for half the year, by a zone of hardier and not less beautiful life, varied as the breezes that whisper on the mountain sides, and as the little rills that seam them. I allude to the Lilies, and Bluebells, and Foxgloves, and Irises, and Windflowers,and Columbines, and Aconites, and Rock-roses, and Violets, and Cranesbills, and countless Pea-flowers, and mountain Avens, and Brambies,