Double Crimson Pæonies in grass.
The Clematis–like Atragene alpina is one of my favourite flowers—seldom seen now–a–days, or indeed at any time, out of a botanical garden, and till lately not often seen in one. It likes to trail over an old stump, or through a thin low bush, or over a rocky bank, and it is a perfectly hardy plant. Speaking of such plants as this, one would like to draw a sharp distinction between them and the various weedy and indistinct subjects which are now creeping into cultivation owing to the revival of interest in hardy plants. Many of these have some botanical interest, but they can be only useless in the garden. Our chief danger now is getting plants into cultivation which are neither very distinct nor very beautiful, while perhaps we neglect many of the really fine kinds. This Atragene is a precious plant for low bush and bank wild garden.
Among plants which one never sees, and which, indeed, one never ought to see, in a flower garden, are the Meadow Rues; and yet there is a quiet beauty and grace about these plants which entitle them to some consideration; and the flowers, too, of certain species, particularly the one here shown in the illustration on page 1, are of singular beauty. When it is considered that all the species will grow anywhere—in any hedgerow or lane or byeway, or among coarse grass, or in a copse, or under the shrubs, in places usually abandoned to common weeds, there is no reason why numbers of them should not be rescued from the oblivion of the botanic garden.
CHAPTER V.
PLANTS CHIEFLY FITTED FOR THE WILD GARDEN.
[ill32]
The Giant Scabious (8 feet high). (Cephalaria procera.)