In My Vicarage Garden 



great effect. I have already written on garden 

 walls, 1 but I did not mention that in many 

 gardens, especially where the surface is flat, a 

 dwarf wall, built of large stones unmortared, but 

 rilled with earth in the interstices, and with 

 earthen tops, will make an excellent home for 

 many good plants, and though it will of course 

 look artificial, it need not look ugly or out of place. 

 The Cornish walls will give a good idea for such 

 walls, and it is the common way of growing plants 

 in the gardens of Portugal, and other parts of 

 South Europe and North Africa. In Mr Craw- 

 ford's charming book, Through the Calendar in 

 Portugal, after telling us how the Portuguese love 

 flowers, but despise trimness, florists' flowers, or 

 novelty in flowers, and only ask for vigorous 

 growth, rich colour, and sweet scent, he describes 

 the distinguishing feature of the Portuguese 

 garden : 



" A survival of the old Moorish times is the wall running 

 by the garden paths faced with painted tiles. Along the top 

 of the low wall is scooped a deep furrow to be filled with 

 garden mould, and planted mostly with carnations, pinks, 

 and gilliflowers, or the dwarf scented purple iris of Portugal. 

 All these plants like the drought, and so set the flowers can 

 be plucked or smelled to without bending the back an 

 ingenious device of the ease-loving Oriental." 



In the rock garden don't be afraid of shrubs, 

 not only dwarf shrubs, but tall and large ones ; 

 nothing will more help to give it a natural ap- 



1 Gloucestershire Garden, p. 203. 

 88 



