198 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 



a rock behind its back, and if you are only careful about 

 the soil, you can have miniature forests of it with little 

 trouble. As for maidenhair, all its uses are beauty ! 



Give me a bouquet of perfect wild rosebuds within 

 a deep fringe of maidenhair to set in a crystal jar where 

 I may watch the deep pink petals unfold and show the 

 golden stars within; let me breathe their first breath 

 of perfume, and you may keep all the greenhouse 

 orchids that are grown. 



Though you can have a variety of ferns in other loca- 

 tions, those that will thrive best on the knoll and keep 

 it ever green and in touch with laurel and hemlock, 

 are but five, the Christmas fern, the Marginal Shield- 

 fern, the common Rock Polypody, the Ebony Spleen wort, 

 and the Spinulose Wood-fern. Of the first pair it is 

 impossible to have too many. The Christmas fern, 

 with its glistening leaves of holly green, has a stout, creep- 

 ing rootstock, which must be firmly secured, a few stones 

 being added temporarily to the hairpins to give weight. 

 The Evergreen Wood-fern and Ebony Spleen wort, having 

 short rootstocks, can be tucked into sufficiently deep holes 

 between rocks or in the hollows left by small decayed 

 stumps, while the transplanting of the Rock Polypody 

 is an act where luck, recklessness, and a pinch of magic 

 must all be combined. 



