DRY-WALLED TERRACE GARDEN 3 



into the bank and along the cool backs of the stones, 

 and make plants of surprising health and vigour that 

 are longer lived than the softer-grown plants in the 

 rich flower-borders. 



I doubt if there is any way in which a good quantity 

 of plants, and of bushes of moderate size, can be so 

 well seen and enjoyed as in one of these roughly 

 terraced gardens, for one sees them up and down and 

 in all sorts of ways, and one has a chance of seeing 

 many lovely flowers clear against the sky, and of per- 

 haps catching some sweetly-scented tiny thing like 

 Dianthus fragrans at exactly nose-height and eye-level, 

 and so of enjoying its tender beauty and powerful 

 fragrance in a way that had never before been found 

 possible. 



Then the beautiful details of structure and marking 

 in such plants as the silvery Saxifrages can never be 

 so well seen as in a wall at the level of the eye or just 

 above or below it ; and plain to see are all the pretty 

 ways these small plants have of seating themselves on 

 projections or nestling into hollows, or creeping over 

 stony surface as does the Balearic Sandwort, or stand- 

 ing like Erinus with its back pressed to the wall in an 

 attitude of soldier-like bolt-uprightness. 



In place of all this easily attained prettiness how 

 many gardens on sloping ground are disfigured by 

 profitless and quite indefensible steep banks of mown 

 grass ! Hardly anything can be so undesirable in a 

 garden. Such banks are unbeautiful, troublesome to 

 mow, and wasteful of spaces that might be full of 

 interest. If there must be a sloping space, and if for 



