36 



IRISH GARDENING. 



The Making of our Home. 



III. The East Garden. 

 By Charlotte G. O'Brien. 



IW.\S .saved by a careless temperament and 

 want of money from the pernicious laciiity 

 of a "paper garden." A garden neatly 

 laid out on paper, accurately measured, thought 

 out and devised, may be all very well for straight 

 town slips behind the houses that owe all their 

 beauty to the hand of man, but for ground 

 formed by nature and by her beautiful curving 

 planes, trust only to the eye, then even the most 

 defective gardening will yield lovely corners and 

 contrasts. My house was on the east side, 

 placed on the edge of a steep slope near the road. 

 What was cut away for preparing foundations 

 was naturally thrown down the slope, so when I 

 got the land I had, on that side of house, first 

 the only possible cart-road to the upper kitchen 

 garden, then a very narrow green, and then a 

 drop in parts of near tw-enty feet down in an 

 abrupt slope I laid out the garden as wide as 

 I could, planted the steep edge with laurels and 

 Berberis Danviuii, &c. It was well enough, 

 but always the desire of a wider garden there 

 was " on me," as we say in Gaelic. In my mind 

 I sought to widen out into the air, but how was 

 it to be done ? I suppose if I had been a rich 

 woman 1 should have built a retaining wail, 

 spent a power of money, and produced some- 

 thing that would have looked nice some filty 

 vears hence when well weathered and over- 

 grown ; but having no money to throw away, I 

 had to achieve my airy flights into space some 

 other way, and did, as I shall now tell. 



Year by year I had two big rubbish collec- 

 tions from house and kitchen garden put 

 together on the hill-side. I collected one heap 

 (say) this year, second year worked it up, 

 covered with manure, &c., and grew marrows 

 on it. The third year it was again broken up, 

 the best stuff taken for flower garden uses, and 

 the rest was "barred" down my beshrubbed 

 slope. Year by year in this way I pushed out 

 my border a foot or two in width. At last 

 what I called my "hanging gardens of Babylon " 

 had advanced so far that only some strong 

 laurels and other shrubs were retaining the 

 earth, and the fall was almost like a wall ; but 

 it was not finished looking. Then I cut my 

 laurels half-way down to the strong wood, laid 

 the cut branches on top, where they were well 



supported by the strong undergrowth. Then I 

 turned rubbish, sticks, &c. , on them, and finally 

 good garden soil to the desired upper level. 

 To keep it all together 1 got from rough corners 

 a lot of old, big plants, periwinkles, artichokes, 

 daisies, veronicas, goats' rue— everything I 

 could lay my hands on. Digging them up in big 

 blocks and laying them on their sides, 1 built a 

 wall of them through and over the laurel stumps, 

 giving a slight slope inwards, and putting a 

 good mass of rubbish and earth on each tier 

 of plants. I trusted to the roots to hold all 

 together, but must own I feared a landslip ! 

 However, the landslip did not come off, and on 

 these airy foundations last winter I ran a w-alk 

 "to the stars," with a charming seat-corner 

 overlooking the river called Casseopeia's Chair. 

 This walk encircles the hill I had built up in 

 space, and last summer my vegetable wall was 

 a mass of flower and growth, and might have 

 been there for fifty years by the look of it. 

 The landslide may come off yet ; who knows ! 

 but I hope not, and meanwhile my green wall and 

 airy walk are an example of the fun one can get 

 without money if one uses one's wits. County 

 Limerick people have a saying, "you can do a 

 lot with and with," though it too often means 

 with them a very lazy "little by little." 



There are not many people who \vant to fill a 

 twenty-foot drop, but there are plentj- who want 

 to hide a bare wall, and who would also be glad 

 to keep in their narrow limits big, coarse, hand- 

 some plants, who could do both in this way. 

 Great clumps of roots, ornamental side out, laid 

 one on top of another, and well backed with any 

 garden rubbish and light-growing shrubs with 

 cord-like roots to hold all together interspersed 

 here and there (for instance, scarlet-berried 

 elder, veronicas, &c.). These coarse flowers 

 make a fine show in a few weeks or months, 

 and enable one to keep the house in cut blooms 

 without having to lay the finer garden bare 

 pretl\- much the whole season. 



//■» bi- continued. I 



tniRSE (KiRZE OR Whi.v) is so common that it i.s, as a 

 rule, disiesjarded as an ornamental shrub In' planters. 

 And yet there are few plants that really excel it in 

 decorative value. In large, mixed borders or on banks 

 it has a charm that is <ill its own. If seeds are g'athered 

 when ripe and sown at once they will germinate in 

 spring. If you have room for them give them a place. 

 Because the}' are common on the hills is no reason why 

 tlu'v should be cxcludi'd from our gardens. 



