Few plants are more lovely in the wild garden than the White Japan Anemone. The idea of the wild garden first arose in the writer’s mind as a home for a numerous class of coarse–growing plants, to which people begrudge room in their borders, such as the Golden Rods, Michaelmas Daisies, Compass plants, and a host of others, which are beautiful for a season only, or perhaps too rampant for what are called choice borders and beds. This Anemone is one of the most beautiful of garden flowers, and one which is as well suited for the wild garden as the kinds alluded to. It grows well in any good soil in copse or shrubbery, and increases rapidly. Partial shade seems to suit it; and in any case the effect of the large white flowers is, if anything, more beautiful in half–shady places. The flowers, too, are more lasting here than where they are fully exposed.
As for the Apennine Anemone (the white as well as the blue variety), it is one of the loveliest spring flowers of any clime, and should be in every garden, in the borders, and scattered thinly here and there in woods and shrubberies, so that it may become “naturalised.” It is scarcely a British flower, being a native of the south of Europe; but having strayed into our wilds and plantations occasionally, it is now included in most books on British plants. The yellow A. ranunculoides, a doubtful native, found in one or two spots, but not really British, is well worth growing, thriving well on the chalk, and being very beautiful.
The large Hepatica angulosa will grow almost as freely as Celandine among shrubs and in half–shady spots, and we all know how readily the old kinds grow on all garden soils of ordinary quality. There are about ten or twelve varieties of the common Hepatica (Anemone Hepatica) grown in British nurseries and gardens, and all the colours of the species should be represented in every collection of spring flowers.
Anemones in the Riviera. Thrive equally well in any open soil here, only flowering later.
There are many of the Ranunculi, not natives of Britain, which would grow as freely as our native kinds. Many will doubtless remember with pleasure the pretty button–like white flowers of the Fair Maids of France (Ranunculus aconitifolius fl. pl.), a frequent ornament of the old mixed border. This, and the wild form from which it comes—a frequent plant in alpine meadows—may also be enjoyed in our wild garden. Quite distinct from all these, and of chastest beauty when well grown, is R. amplexicaulis, with flowers of pure white, and simple leaves of a dark glaucous green and flowing graceful outline; a hardy and charming plant on almost any soil. This is one of the elegant exotic forms of a family well represented in the golden type in our meadows, and therefore it is welcome as giving us a strange form. Such a plant deserves that pains be taken to establish it in good soil, in spots where a rank vegetation may not weaken or destroy it.
Of the Globe Flowers (Trollius), there are various kinds apart from our own, all rich in colour, fragrant, and hardy in a remarkable degree. These are among the noblest wild–garden plants—quite hardy, free of growth in the heaviest of soil and wettest of climates, affording a lovely type of early summer flower–life, and one distinct from any usually seen in our fields or gardens; for these handsome Globe flowers are among the many flowers that for years have found no place in the garden proper. They are lovely in groups or colonies, in cold grassy places, where many other plants would perish.[ill26]
