Page:The Wild Garden William Robinson.djvu/28

12 are as follows: first, because hundreds of the finest hardy flowers will thrive much better in the places I recommend for them than ever they did in the old-fashioned border. Even comparatively small ones, like the ivy-leaved Cyclamen, a beautiful plant that we rarely find in perfection in gardens, I have seen perfectly naturalized and spread all over the mossy surface of a thin wood. Secondly, because they will look infinitely better than ever they did in gardens, in consequence of fine-leaved plant, fern, and flower, and climber, ornamental grass and dwarf trailing shrub, mutually relieving each other in ways innumerable as delightful. Any one of a thousand combinations, which this book will suggest to the intelligent reader, will prove as far superior to any aspect of the old mixed border, or the ordinary type of modern flower-garden, as is a lovely mountain valley to a country in which the eye can see but canals and hedges. Thirdly, because, arranged as I propose, no disagreeable effects result from decay. The raggedness of the old mixed border after the first flush of spring and early summer bloom had passed was intolerable, bundles of decayed stems tied to sticks making the place look like the parade-ground of a number of crossing-sweepers with their "arms piled." When Lilies are