15 NOVEMBER 1946, Page 17

In My Garden I spent a pleasant half hour or

so last week in walking round the Botanic Gardens at Oxford. The most beautiful thing—apart from the trees—as it seemed to me, was a bush on the top of the rock-garden, but it was nothing more rare than the common Cotoneaster Horizontalis, though I confess to having consulted the label. The distinction of it was that its great fish-bone leaves grew from a thick trunk a couple of feet or so in height and wept over the rocks, displaying to a distance the wealth of bright red berries. As a weeping standard it makes a most precious bush in such a position, and it is at its best when most Alpine flowers are at their worst. It is, of course, most useful for covering a bank or trained up a wall, and its berries are often disregarded by birds which will wolf the fruit of the Pyracanthus ; and in any place its flowers are a feast for hive bees, not to mention queen wasps. To watch hosts of them even trying to open the still-shut flower is a standard pleasure of