The foot of the near mound is a pink cloud of London Pride. Shooting up among it and just beyond is the white St. Bruno�s Lily {Paradisea liliastrum}. More of this lovely little lily-like Anthericum is again a few feet further along, grouped with Iris Cengialti, one of the bluest of the Irises. The back of the mound has some of the tenderly tinted Caparne hybrid Irises two feet high, of pale lilac colouring, rising from among dark-leaved, white-bloomed Iberis, and next the path a pretty, large-flowered Tufted Pansy that nearly matches the Iris.
But the glory of the mound is the long stretch of blue-lilac Phlox divaricata, whose colour is again repeated by a little of the same on the sunny bank to the left. Here it is grouped with pale pink Scotch Brier, more pale yellow Corydalis and Arcnaria montana smothered in its masses of white bloom. At the end of the bank the colour of the Phlox divaricata is deepened by sheaves of Camassia esculenta that spear up through it. The whole back of this bank has a free planting of graceful pale-coloured Columbines with long spurs, garden kinds that come easily from seed and that were originally derived from some North American species. They are pale yellow and warm white; some have the outer portion of the flower of a faint purple, much like that of some of the patches in an old, much-washed, cotton patchwork quilt.
The dark trees on the right have rambling Roses growing into them�Paul's Carmine Pillar and the Himalayan R. Brunonis. The red Rose does not flower so freely here as on a pillar in sunlight, but its fewer stems clamber high into the Holly, and the bloom shows in thin natural wreaths that are even more pleasing to an artist's eye than the more ordered abundance of the flowery post. At the foot of the Hollies hardy Ferns grow luxuriantly in the constant shade. A little later a few clumps of Lilies will spring up from among them; the lovely pink rubellum, the fine yellow szovitzianum, and the buff testaceum. On the left-hand side, behind the sunny bank, a Garland Rose comes through and tumbles out of a Yew, and some sprays of an old bush of the single R. polyantha, that has spread to a circumference of one hundred and fifty feet, have pushed their way through the Ilex.
