If your garden is in the country, and is only partly shaded by trees, you can grow many beautiful things in it. Perhaps you will be able to have a background of large stones, and plant Ferns amongst them. The hardiest Ferns are Male Fern, Osmunda, Hart’s Tongue, Spleen Wort, Lady Fern, and Shield Fern, and these all like shade. Amongst the Ferns you should have Solomon’s Seal, Columbines, and Foxgloves. As far as you can, in a garden of this kind plant big patches of one flower, and not a muddle of single specimens. Have a bed of Lilies of the Valley in some part of it, and under the trees a bed of Wild Hyacinths. Snowdrops do well amongst the roots of shrubs and trees, so well that in some gardens they spread and increase like a wild flower. They are fond of peat. Primroses do well in shady places, and so does the Wood Anemone (Anemone Nemorosa). Periwinkle will flower in shade, though it likes sun part of the day. Many Saxifrages and Sempervivums (Rockfoils and Stonecrops) will do well in shady places. For instance, if you have a stone edging to your border, you will be able to have clumps of the mossy Saxifrages and of various Stonecrops. Between them the little dwarf Campanulas would do well, and give you colour all through the summer months. The splendid tall Campanula Pyramidalis might do farther back near your Ferns, if you can give it good soil; so would Campanula Persicifolia, which grows wild in Yorkshire woods. Many Lilies like partial shade and to be near shrubs, but they should never be planted close to the roots of trees. It is not as generally known as it should be that nearly all the Cyclamens are hardy. The Persian Cyclamen, that we know so well as a pot plant and in greenhouses, is not hardy, and you must not try that in your garden. Get some of the other species which you will find offered in any good bulb catalogue, and in winter give them a covering of moss or dry leaves. They like a dry, porous soil, mixed with a little peat or leaf-mould and some lime or old mortar. The corms are often half out of the ground, or at any rate level with it; but some gardeners, who have paid great attention to their culture, prefer to bury them just under the soil, because the roots of some species come from the top of the corm. The one thing Cyclamens will not stand is stagnant moisture. You must give them well-drained, sandy soil, mixed with a little lime. We repeat this because it is so important, and because Cyclamens are so beautiful that they are worth any trouble you can take for them. Some flower in spring and some in autumn, and they must be planted when they are at rest: the spring ones in October or November, and the autumn ones in June. If they flourish with you their seedlings will appear naturally; otherwise you had better buy new corms when you want them. Gardeners raise them from seed, but this requires a frame or gentle heat.