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.

The Winter Aconite (Eranthis hyemalis) should be naturalised in every country seat in Britain - it is as easy to do so as to introduce the thistle. It may be placed quite under the branches of deciduous trees, will come up and flower when the trees are naked, will have its foliage developed before the leaves come on the trees, and be afterwards hidden from sight. Thus masses of this earliest flower may be grown without the slightest sacrifice of space, and only be noticed when bearing a bloom on every little stem. That fine old plant,the Christmas Rose (Helleborus niger), likes partial shade better than full exposure, and should be used abundantly, giving it rather snug and warm positions, so that its flowers may be encouraged to open well and fully. Any other kinds might also be used. Recently many kinds of Helleborus have been added to our gardens, not all of them so conspicuous at first sight as the Christmas Rose, yet they are of remarkable beauty of foliage and habit as well as of blossom, and they flower in the spring. These, too, show the advantage of the wild garden as regards cultivation. They will thrive much better in any bushy places, or copses, or in mutually sheltering groups on warm banks and slopes, even in hedge banks, old quarries, or rough mounds, than in the ordinary garden harder. Of the difference in the effect in the two cases it is needless to speak.

The Green Hellebore in the Wild Garden.

Some of the Monkshoods are very handsome, but all of them virulent poisons; and, bearing in mind what fatal accidents have arisen from their use, they are better not used at all in the garden proper. Amongst tall and vigorous herbaceous plants few are more suitable for wild and semi-wild places. They are hardy and robust enough to grow anywhere in shady or half-shady spots; and their tall spikes, loaded with blue flowers, are very beautiful. An illustration in the chapter on the plants suited for the wild garden shows the common Aconite in a Somersetshire valley in company with the Butterbur and the Hemlock. In such a place its beauty is very striking. The larger rich blue kinds, and the blue and white one, are very showy grown in deep soils, in which they attain a great height. When out of flower, like many other stately Perennials, they were often stiff and ugly in the old borders and beds. In the wild garden their stately beauty will be more remarkable than ever under the green leaves in copses and by streams. And when flower-time is gone, their stems, no longer tied into bundles or cut in by the knife, will group finely with other vigorous herbaceous vegetation.

The Delphiniums, or tall Perennial Larkspurs, are amongst the most beautiful of all flowers. They embrace almost every shade of blue, from the rich dark tone of D, grandiflora to the charming caerulean tints of such as D. Belladonna; and being usually of a tall and strong type, will make way among long grasses and vigorous weeds, unlike many things for which we have to recommend an open space, or a wood with nothing but a carpet of moss under the trees.

One of the prettiest effects which I have ever seen was a colony of tall Larkspurs. Portions of old roots of several species and varieties had been chopped off when a bed of these plants was dug in the autumn. For convenience sake the refuse had been thrown into the neighbouring shrubbery, far in among the shrubs and trees. Here they grew in half-open spaces, which were so far removed from the margin that they were not dug and were not seen. When I saw the Larkspurs in flower they were certainly the loveliest things that one could see. They were more beautiful than they are in borders or beds, not growing in such close stiff tufts, but mingling with and relieved by the trees above and the shrubs around. Little more need be said to any one who knows and cares about such plants, and has an opportunity of planting in such neglected places. This case points out that one might make wild gardens from the mere parings and thinnings of the beds and borders in autumn in any place where there is a collection of good hardy plants.

Tall Perennial Larkspurs, naturalised in Shrubbery (1878).

The engraving on the next page represents one of the most beautiful effects obtained in his wild garden by an acquaintance of mine who began when he knew very little of plants and their favoured haunts, and succeeded well in a not very favourable site. Herbaceous Paeonies were amongst those that succeeded best. The effect was very beautiful, either close at hand or seen at a considerable distance off. Herbaceous Paeonies are amongst the most free, vigorous, and hardy of perennial plants, and with them alone most novel and beautiful effects may be carried out in most places where there is room. Even in comparatively small gardens, a group or two outside the margin of a shrubbery would be desirable. The effect of the blooms amongst the long grass of the wild garden is finer than any they present in borders, and when out of flower they do not seem to be in the way, as they often are thought to be when in borders and beds. It is almost needless to speak here of the great variety of forms now obtainable amongst these herbaceous Paeonies, many of which are agreeably scented. The older forms were not remarkable in that respect, but rather the contrary. In addition to the splendour of colour for which Paeonies are long and well known, there are now many delicately - coloured and tinted varieties. The whole race is undeservedly neglected. People spend plenty of money on greenhouses which will never produce anything so handsome as a well-grown group of herbaceous Paeonies in the open garden; yet when they are grown they are often begrudged a few feet of good soil, though that is all they would require for years at a time. My friend's Paeonies formed a group that could be seen from a distance; when I saw them they were surrounded by long and waving grass. I cannot give any idea of the fine effect.

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 tine kinds. This Atragene is a precious plant for Low bush and bank wild garden.

Double Crimson Paeonies in grass.

Among plants which one never sees, and which, indeed, one never ought to see, in a flower garden, are the Meadow lines; 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.