Probably many of your readers will ask, "What is a wild garden?" When I came to London, about fifteen years ago, "flower-gardening" had hut one mode of expression only, viz. " bedding out," and that in its harshest form - ribbons, borders, and solid masses of flowers of one colour and one height. The old hardy flowers had been completely swept away ; the various and once popular race of so-called florist's flowers were rarely or never seen. As a consequence, gardens were indescribably monotonous to any person with the faintest notion of the inexhaustible charms of the plant world. This kind of flower-gardening has the same relation to true, art in a garden which the daubs of colour on an Indian's blanket have to the best pictures, in fighting, some years later, in the various journals open to me, the battle of nature and variety against this saddening and blank monotony, I was occasionally met by a ridicule of the old-fashioned mixed border which the bedding plants had supplanted. Now, a well-arranged and varied mixed border may be made one of the most beautiful of gardens ; but to so form it requires some knowledge of plants, as well as good taste. Nevertheless, the objection was just as concerned the great majority of mixed borders ; they were ragged, unmeaning, and even monotonous.

1 A letter written bv request, in the Rural New Yorker, July 1876.

I next began to consider the various ways in which hardy plants might be grown wholly apart from either way the bedding plants or that of the mixed border), and the wild garden, or garden formed in the wilderness, grove, shrubbery, copse, or rougher parts of the pleasure garden, was a pet idea which I afterwards threw into the form of a book with this name. In nearly all our gardens we have a great deal of surface wholly wasted - wide spaces in the shrubbery frequently dug over in the winter, plantations, grass-walks, hedgerows, rough banks, slopes, etc., which hitherto have grown only grass and weeds, and on these a rich garden flora may be grown. Hundreds of the more vigorous and handsome herbaceous plants that exist will thrive in these places and do further good in exterminating weeds and preventing the need of digging. Every kind of surface may he embellished by a person with any slight knowledge of hardy plants - ditch-hanks, gravel-pits, old trees, hedge-banks, rough, grassy places that are never mown, copses, woods, lanes, rocky or stony ground.

The tendency has always been to suppose that a plant from another country than our own was a subject requiring much attention, not thinking that the conditions that occur in such places as mentioned above, are, as a rule, quite as favourable as those that obtain in nature throughout the great northern regions of Europe, Asia, and America. Here some common plants of the woods of the Eastern States are considered rarities and coddled accordingly to their destruction. It is quite a phenomenon to see a flower on the little Yellow Dog's-Tooth Violet, which I remember seeing in quantity among the grass in your noble Central Park. When one has but a few specimens of a plant, it is best no doubt to carefully watch them. But an exposed and carefully dug garden border is the worst place to grow many wood and copse plants (I mean plants that grow naturally in such places), and in many uncultivated spots here the American Dog's-Tooth Violet would flower quite as freely as at home. Your beautiful little Mayflower, Epigaea repens, we have never succeeded in growing in our best American nurseries, as they are called, which grow your Rhododendrons and other flowering shrubs so well. If a number of young plants of this were put out in a sandy fir-wood, under the shrubs and pines, as they grow in New Jersey, we should succeed at once. Your beautiful Trillium grandiflorum is usually seen here in a poor state ; but I have seen a plant in a shady position in a shrubbery, in rich, moist soil, quite two feet through and two feet high.

I mention these things to show that the wild garden may even have advantages from the point of view of cultivation. Another advantage is the facilities it affords us for enjoying representations of the vegetation of other countries. Here, for example, the poorest soil in the most neglected copse will grow a mixture of golden rods and asters, which will give us an aspect of vegetation everywhere seen in American woods in autumn. This to you may appear a very commonplace delight ; but as we have nothing at all like it, it is welcome. Besides, we in this way get the golden rods and coarser asters out of the garden proper, in which they used to overrun the choicer plants, and where they did much to disgrace the mixed border. So, in like manner, you may, in New England or New Jersey, make wild gardens of such of our English flowers as you love. For example, the now numerous and very handsome varieties of our Primroses, Polyanthuses, and Oxlips would probably succeed better with you in moist places, in woods, or partially shaded positions, than in the open garden. There can be no doubt in which position they would look best. But let us suppose for a moment that there was no other object for the wild garden in America than growing the many lovely wild flowers that inhabit the land, it is sufficient. Here some of your wildlings are the darlings of our rock-garden growers, though we arc far from possessing all the bright flowers and graceful trailers that adorn the bogs and woods and heaths of the Eastern States. It would be must wise, in case of possessing a little bit of wood or copse, adorned naturally with the trailing Partridge Berry, and the rosy Lady's Slipper (Cypripedium acaule), which I noticed growing so plentifully, to preserve the spot as a wild garden, and add to it such home and foreign, free and handsome hardy plants, as one could obtain.

Woodruft and Ivy.

It is impossible in this letter to speak of the various kinds of wild gardens, but the opportunity which the system offers for embellishing cool shady places is one which should make it interesting In the people to whose language belongs the term "shade trees." Usually flower beds and borders are in the full sun- a very proper arrangement in a cool country. But even in our climate, there are in the warm months many days in which the woodland shade is sought in preference to the open lawn, and when the fully-exposed garden is deserted. Therefore, it is clearly desirable that we have flowers in shady as well as sunny places. Many plants, too, love the shade, and we only require to plant the most suitable of these to enjoy a charming wild garden. It need not be pointed out to Americans that a vast number of herbaceous plants naturally inhabit woods. In America, where shade is such a necessity, the wild garden in the shade will be the most delightful retreat near the country house. In it many of the plants common in the gardens of all northern countries will, without wearisome attention, flower in the spring.

For the early summer months flowers of a somewhat later period will be selected, as, for example, the later Irises - lovely hardy flowers, the tall Asphodel A. ramosus, the Day Lilies (Hemerocallis), the Solomon's Seal and some of its allies, the Veronicas, tall Phloxes, the great Scarlet Poppy (Papaver bracteatum), Symphytums in variety ; these are all free-growing and admirable plants for the wild wood-garden. Mulleins (Verbascum), Salvias, Harebells (Campanula), Willow herbs, tall Lupines, Geraniums, Spurges, Meadow Rues, Columbines, Delphiniums, and the latest wind flowers (Anemone).

Later still, and in the sunny days, would come the various beautiful everlasting peas, various plants of the Mallow tribe, the Poke Weeds, broad-leaved Sea Lavender, and other vigorous kinds, the Globe Thistles, Acanthuses, the free-flowering Yuccas, such as Y. flaccida and Y. filamentosa, the common Artichoke, with its noble flowers ; and in autumn, a host of the Golden Rods and Michaelmas Daisies. These are so common in America that adding them to the wild garden would probably be considered a needless labour ; but the substitution of the various really beautiful species of aster for those commonly found and of inferior beauty would well repay. In case it were thought desirable in making a wild garden in a shady position to grow plants thai do not attain perfection in such positions, they might be grown in the more open parts at hand, and sufficiently near to be seen in the picture.