42 Hardy Plants for Cottage Gardens 



may be of value to many amateurs. A stone wall three feet 

 high built southeast or south or west of a bed not only shades 

 the roots of plants from the hot rays of the sun, but in the cool 

 shadow of it, evaporation does not go on as in the open, and 

 the soil of a dry exposed bed, when thus protected, is rendered 

 damp and shaded for a good part of the day. Several hours of 

 direct sunshine are good, but few plants can stand it all day. 

 Also in winter these walls catch the snow and pile deep drifts 

 that are a perfect protection to even tender perennials. Al- 

 though a portion of the garden lies on a low level, the greater 

 part of it is three and six and even eight feet above that level; 

 yet, when covered with snow, it presents a smooth sloping un- 

 broken surface under which all inequalities of height disap- 

 pear. In the shadow of the walls the snow lies late upon the 

 beds in the spring, which saves the plants from the alternate 

 thawing and freezing that are so disastrous. In some in- 

 stances these walls merely face the cutting of a bank that rises 

 from two to three feet above a bed, and sometimes I have 

 built them up from the ground in a double row of rocks. I 

 note that plants in these shaded beds flourish amazingly and 

 never suffer from drought no matter how prolonged it may be; 

 this means an economy of labor in watering. 



Aside from the utility I like the strong contrast of tender 

 plant life against the stern granite. The Japanese have used 

 stones as one of the chief adornments of their gardens, and 

 while we cannot and need not imitate their use of them, we 

 can make them serve in our own way. I have a broken 

 jagged stone almost four feet high at the corner of one of my 

 walls, that I always speak of as a corner-stone of happiness, 

 so great is my pleasure in seeing it serve as a background in 

 turn to rock columbine, harebells, meadow rue, Japanese iris, 

 clematis, Physostegia and Michaelmas daisy. 



Nothing could be more favorable to the growth of deep- 



