My Garden in Spring 



fine crop of seed. Gentiana verna, collected forms from 

 Mt. Cenis, mostly of the angulosa type, and G. brachyphylla 

 have spread into good tufts. Campanula cenisia is a good 

 test plant, and has settled down in the chippy patch, 

 while Papaver rhoeticum looks as happy as it did in its 

 Tyrolean shale beds. 



Then in the following Spring the rock garden was 

 enlarged, a new wing thrown out, and there was a chance 

 for a fresh venture in underground watering. A steep 

 bank was divided into large pockets, and some slabs of 

 old slate from a demolished water-tank were used to pave 

 the bottom of the pockets, following the line of the slope. 

 Partition walls of brick and cement below ground and 

 stone above were arranged so that water, poured down 

 a portion of drainpipe at the top of the hill, would fill 

 each pocket up to a certain height and then flow through 

 to the next. It took some time to construct and harden, 

 and so was empty for a week or two, and I was chaffed 

 by all my garden visitors on my fish hatchery or filter 

 beds, and many pleasantries arose from my adopting Mr. 

 Malby's ingenious plan of inserting half a hock bottle at 

 advantageous corners, so that in winter the corks might 

 be removed and the beds drained. But once filled up 

 with various cunning mixtures of sand and leaf in some 

 parts, and old mortar rubble, or even our local gravel 

 screened and stirred up with something a little more 

 feeding in others, it looked like any ordinary new rock 

 garden bed, and many things have astounded me by the 

 way they have approved of it and spread or seeded. 

 Viola bosniaca never liked me and my ways before, and I 

 was quite as much ashamed of myself as any really keen 

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