WALL GARDENING 87 



Just look for a moment at the flowers that grow on the roof of 

 the little shelter house at the end of Mr. William Robinson's bowl- 

 ing green. (Plate 37.) It is natural to suppose that a roof would 

 be about the hardest place in the world for plants to grow. Yet 

 on this one roof there are perhaps twenty species of flowers! I 

 wish I could give a life-size portrait of every different kind. Some 

 of those miniature islands of bloom are perfect little poems. Now? 

 this sort of thing we can do. True, we cannot buy slates that have 

 been on old barns for three hundred years, but we can have them 

 specially quarried if necessary, and if we insist upon it we Can get 

 good, square, broad, flat, honest, red tile the kind you see every- 

 where on old houses in England. These we can have laid in such 

 a manner that plenty of earth can be put in without interfering 

 with necessary cement or causing a leak. Then we can get sheets 

 of moss from the woods on which some of the flowers will eventu- 

 ally self-sow. And in the pockets of soil we can put plants of stone- 

 crop or Sedum (a fascinating genus of many colours and textures) 

 which will live on your roof when it gets so hot that you cannot 

 bear your hand upon it and so cold that the thermometer drops 

 below zero. 



Another enchanting feature of English gardens is the crannied 

 flower in the steps that lead to the garden and between the flag- 

 stones of the path. You ought to see the Kenilworth ivy filling 

 every chink in the steps, softening every sharp corner, obliterating 

 the bad architecture and caressing all the good. If you cannot go 

 to England you can see the very thing I speak of in the frontispiece 

 of "The American Flower Garden," by Neltje Blanchan. Instead 

 of having solid stone steps the English often leave a crack an inch 

 or two wide which runs the full length of each tread. Such spaces 

 they fill with earth and in them they plant rock-loving flowers. 



