In My Vicarage Garden 



carpet that one felt almost loath to tread on it 

 with dirty shoes, and of an even texture through- 

 out, nowhere above half an inch high, and with 

 no vacant spaces. It had a rapid sale, but it 

 was soon found to degenerate, and in many cases 

 to die completely, and I have never since heard 

 of its being used either as a carpet or as a rock 

 plant. About the same time another plant was 

 introduced with the character of being a perfect 

 carpet plant. This was the Chrysanthemum or 

 Pyrethrum Tchihalchewii^ from Russia, and though 

 not so close in habit as the Sagina, it was un- 

 doubtedly a plant that in some places might be 

 useful, where a coarse carpet would suffice. But 

 it soon proved itself to be very capricious, 

 doing fairly well in some gardens, but refusing 

 to grow at all in others, and it was, 1 believe, 

 found to be useless under or even near trees ; 

 so it had to be given up, though where it 

 grows well it makes a very pretty rockwork 

 plant. 



But there are many plants of real beauty which 

 make beautiful carpet plants, answering all the 

 conditions that I have laid down. I place among 

 the very best the Campanula Portenschlagiana, 

 from Dalmatia. It is so perfectly hardy and ever- 

 green that I never knew it the least injured in 

 the hardest winter ; and with me it keeps a 

 uniform height during the winter, not above two 

 or three inches, and without any bare, brown 

 places. Then, in the summer, it is a mass of 



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