Page:The Wild Garden William Robinson.djvu/31

 might be seen or gathered in due season, and their vigorous vegetation form a covert welcome to the game preserver. To these two groups might be added subjects like the winter Heliotropes, the handsome British Epilobium angustifolium, and many other plants which, while attractive in the garden, are apt to spread about so rapidly as to become a nuisance there. Clearly these should only be planted in wild and semi-wild places. Fifthly, because we may in this way settle also the question of spring flowers, and the spring garden, as well as that of hardy flowers generally. In the way I suggest, many parts of every country garden, and many suburban ones, may be made alive with spring flowers. The blue stars of the Apennine Anemone will be seen to greater advantage " wild," in shady or half-shady bare places, under trees, than in any conceivable formal arrangement, and it is but one of hundreds of sweet spring flowers that will succeed perfectly in the way I propose. Sixthly, because there can be few more agreeable phases of communion with nature than naturalizing the natives of countries in which we are infinitely more interested than in those of greenhouse or stove plants. From the walls of the Coliseum, the prairies of the New World, the woods and meadows of all