It has been a satisfaction to us to find that a moderate upturning of the soil does not apparently disturb those inmates of it that we wish to retain. Bluebells and bracken both have their roots at a depth to which the spade in these operations need not penetrate, while to superimposed earth they appear to be quite indifferent. The spring that followed our first operations of this kind bluebells flowered better than usual, as if glad to be freed from some of their troublesome neighbours, especially probably that pest of copses, dog mercury. The introduced bulbs, which now share the ground with them, are mostly of the taller kinds, daffodils predominating, and for these the fact of the soil being all newly upturned is an advantage. Our present plan is that the sides of the glade shall remain permanently uncut, or cut at most once or twice a year, the central, or walking space, being kept regularly mown. The bulbs, being at the sides, will thus not suffer. Moreover the considerable difference of height between mown and unmown grass is bound to give height and emphasis to our little glade. As in the similar case of planting rock gardens, such considerations may seem to some poor devices. Yet upon the successful carrying out of them depends the whole of that “general effect” which is all that such critics probably heed. We are not, after all, Nature’s mandatories, and our little slopes are not Alps, or even alpine meadows. If we can attain to so much as a suggestion of the sort of thing we dream of we may rest content.
Here on the bench beside me is a basketful of plants, not garden ones by any means, but weeds, mere ugly weeds, detested, and detestable, which, having pulled up, I was about to throw away. And, sitting down for a moment before doing so, I chanced to turn over two or three of them in idle mood, and in so doing have been captured unawares, as I have often been before, by the wonder, the mystery, of those ordinary processes of nature, which we all of us know so remarkably well, and which we certainly as a rule take such uncommonly little heed of.