WILD WALL-GARDENS 



229 



old builders of the larger garden helped to found the lesser 

 one when they built the fruit wall giving shelter from the 

 north and east ; and they supplied the original stocks of 

 many of the miniature growths when they set the lawns 

 with spreading wych-elms and shady sycamores, and planted 

 thickets of holly and yew. These trees and shrubs, and 

 various garden fruits and flowers like the strawberry and 

 the snapdragon, have formed 

 year after year the nursery for 

 the wild garden on the wall ; 

 so that the continued care of 

 man has been needed for its 

 maintenance, though it has been 

 given perfectly unconsciously. 

 This unconscious tendance pro- 

 longed through several genera- 

 tions kept up a steady annual 

 sowing while time softened the 

 fabric of the wall, collected a 

 thin layer of soil in the joints 

 and crevices, and nurtured a 

 handful of the seeds which were 

 strewn summer by summer on 



such an uncertain bed. We may notice in June or July 

 the wall-flowers and snapdragons splashing the brick with 

 crimson and purple, or the thorny arch of the wild rose 

 swinging its pale pink blossoms against the sky ; but only a 

 purposeful examination is likely to reveal the minute variety 

 of the plants and flowers in the wild wall-garden, and the 

 haunting strangeness of their wild yet man-loving growth. 



Some of them are sown by the wind, more by the birds 

 that raid the garden, and a few by the wild animals. In the 

 soft steady breezes of late spring, when the seed-pods of the 



