The Cape Pond Weed in an English ditch in winter.
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Day Lily by margin of water.
If with this water–garden we combine the wild garden of land plants—herbaceous, trailers, etc.—some of the loveliest effects possible in gardens will be produced. The margins of lakes and streams are happily not upturned by the spade in winter; and hereabouts, just away from the water–line, almost any vigorous and really hardy flower of the thousands now in our gardens may be grown and will afterwards take care of itself. The Globe–flowers alone would form beautiful effects in such positions, and would endure as long as the Grass. Near the various Irises that love the water–side might be planted those that thrive in moist ground, and they are many, including the most beautiful kinds. Among recently introduced plants the singular Californian Saxifraga peltata is likely to prove a noble one for the water–side, its natural habitat being beside mountain watercourses, dry in the autumn when it is at rest; both flowers and foliage are effective, and the growth very vigorous when in moist ground. It would require a very long list to enumerate all the plants that would grow near the margins of water, and apart from the aquatics proper; but enough has been said to prove that, given a strip of ground beside a stream or lake, a garden of the most delightful kind could be formed. The juxtaposition of plants inhabiting different situations—water–plants, water–side plants, and land–plants thriving in moist ground—would prevent what would, in many cases, be so undesirable—a general admixture of the whole. Two distinct classes of effects could be obtained, the beauty of the flowers seen close at hand, and that of the more conspicuous kinds in the distance, or from the other side of the water of a stream or lakelet.
An interesting point in favour of the wild garden is the succession of effects which it may afford, and which are suggested by the illustrations on the next pages, both showing a succession of life on the same spot of ground. In gardens in early summer at present the whole of the portion devoted to flower–gardening is dug up raw as a ploughed field, just when the earth is naturally most thickly strewn with flowers. A very little consideration and observation will suffice to make it clear that a succession of effects may be secured without this violent disfigurement of our gardens in the fairest days of early summer. These are not the days for digging or planting either, and the system that necessitates them is pernicious in its effects on our gardens.
It is equally an enemy of all peace or rest for the gardener, who, having trenched, dug, enriched, planted, and sown, through the autumn, winter, and spring, might certainly begin to look for the fruits and flowers of his labour, when he has to face the most trying effort of all—the planting of the flower–garden in May and June with a host of flowers too tender to be committed to the earth at an earlier season.
