CHAPTER VII 



WHEN building walls, be generous and do not cramp a 

 fine creeper for the sake of a few feet of bricks and 

 mortar. I schemed a wall a good few years ago, and 

 thought that eight feet was high enough for anything invited to 

 ascend ; but far from it. Ambitious things were at the top in 

 no time, and some have easily climbed to the summit of pillars 

 on the wall which were never set there for them. Now certain 

 creepers wrestle with the roses for a row of arches that connect 

 the pillars, and clematis and vine, bignonia and ercilla, pueraria 

 and smilax have ignored my arrangements in favour of their own 

 more extensive programme. 



Kadsura japonica will probably follow suit ; but this fine, 

 half-hardy climber with small, pendent white flowers and cori- 

 aceous leaves, though in brisk advance, has not yet been here 

 long enough to break boundaries. There is a Kadsura with 

 variegated foliage — not always an additional charm — but in the 

 case of this shrub possibly an advantage. 



Kalanchoe was much in evidence a year ago, but one does not 

 see these interesting greenhouse crassulas so often now. I never 

 much admired them. 



Kalmia latijolia is a great shrub, given proper conditions. 

 The best that I have seen in Devon grew among the foothills 

 of Dartmoor in cool deep peat ; but none in England, I suspect, 



have attained the twenty feet recorded from this Kalmia's home 



63 



