Page:The Wild Garden William Robinson.djvu/35

 in wild and natural gardening. I allude to the beautiful Caucasian Comfrey (Symphytum caucasicum), which grows about twenty inches high, and bears quantities of the loveliest blue pendulous flowers. It, like many others, does much better in a wood, grove, or any kind of shrubbery, than in any other position, just filling in the naked spaces between the trees and shrubs, and has a quick-growing and spreading tendency, but never becomes weedy or objectionable. As if to contrast with it, there is the deep crimson Bohemian Comfrey (S. bohemicum), which is sometimes startling from the depth of its vivid colouring, and the white Comfrey (S. orientale), quite a vigorous-growing kind, blooming early in April and May, with the blue Caucasian C.

I purposely omit the British Forget-me-nots, wishing now chiefly to show what we may do with exotics quite as hardy as our own wildings ; and we have another Forget-me-not, not British, which surpasses them all — the early Myosotis dissitiflora. This is like a patch of the bluest sky settled down among the moist stones of a rockwork or any similar spot before our own Forget-me-not has opened its blue eyes, and is admirable for glades or banks in wood or shrubbery, especially in moist districts.