TALBOT6814

Abb. ¹
27 May

My dear Henry

I had a nice drive from Frome by Nunny Castle ² which I recommend to your girls ³ to draw whenever they are at Frome it is only one mile a pretty road –

The garden here looks more encouraging that I had expected. Some rarities have perished, some escaped. Among the latter I am glad to find Mahonia pallida<,> Cycas revoluta, Corypha australis<,> Sabal Adansoni, Chamærops hystrix & Martiana, Tetranthera japonica, Edwardsia flexuosa & macrocarpa, Olea fragrans, Cistus formosus, &c &c – My Solanum crispums are in full blow one cannot have too many. In the Greenhouse we have [Callethrix?] a myrtaceous heathlike plant which I enclose as well as a flower & leaf of Rhod. glaucum from Sikkim the first that has flowered out of doors entirely unprotected. We have still some Narciss’s – N. gracilis a very good late one – I will save you some roots with single poeticus –

The Azaleas are splendid particularly the deep semidouble pink – & the white.

Oxalis cernua is in great force – a capricious plant that flowers at no particular season. Grevillia acanthifolia – Cytisus Weldeni – as sweet nearly as your Wistaria – magnificent Camellias nearly over – tree peonies – & some fine new hybrid rhododendrons are our chief beauties – one Scilla hyacinthoides is in flower – & Michael Angelo’s tulip the latest of all. Hemerocallis japonica flowering very well. [Egnidium?] Saundersii is a pretty type of suffrutescent crassulaceæ & the only hardy one – some geraniums have survived, tuberous & others.

Let me know when you start for the Pyrenees.

Y^r aff
W F S