The Call of the Wildflower

ars are the flowe

in rows, and aski

ell but for loving

they tell me m

edi

to blind us to the fact that there is in the wild a peculiar quality which the domesticated can never reproduce, and that the plant which is free, even if it be the humblest and most common, has a charm for the nature-lover which

e in the assembling of heterogeneous flowers in one enclosure, which perplexes and wearies the mind. For just as a cosmopolitan city is no city at all, and a Babel is no language, so a multifarious rock-garden, where a host of alien plants are grouped in unnatural juxtaposition, is a collection not of flowers but of "specimens." For s

y the planting of various mountain flowers in the situations suited to their needs. Then followed many earnest colloquies between the creator of this fair scene and a neighbour enthusiast, as they walked about the garden together and inspected it plant by plant, much as a farmer goes his rounds to examine his oats or turnips. They surveyed the world, botanically speaking, fr

st minds a disregard or veritable contempt for wildflowers as being, with a few e

as invited by a cottager to throw away a bunch of "ordinary gays" th

rucifer is very insignificant in appearance; and the fact that anyone should plod many miles to gather it so upset the gravity of an extremely demure and respectful servant girl, when she saw it on my mantelpiece, that to her ow

ization, just as a "deserving" pauper might be received into an almshouse, or an orphan child into one of Dr. Barnardo's homes. And strange to say, this reverential belief in the garden, as enhancing the merits of the wild, has found its way into many

the result has been that some of the more distinguished plants, such as the daphne mezereum, are fast losing their place among British wildflowers, and becoming nothing better than prisoners and captives of the parterre. This

ant, the tutsan. "Tutsan is a hardy shrubby St. John's-wort, largely employed by gardeners of the last century; but it has now, for the most part, retired from business, in consequence of t

er to set at liberty the many British plants that are now under detention. I would instruct my gardener (if I had one) to lift very carefully the daphnes, the lilies of the valle