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THE NATURE BOOK 



flowers, chiefly in shades of blue, Alpine 

 Primroses, preferring shade to sunshine, 

 Silenes, Rockfoils or Saxifrages in endless 

 variety, Rock Cresses and Candytuft, 

 Snowliakes and Snowdrops, Windflowers 

 or Anemones. Crocuses, Squills, Irises 

 and Alpine Asters, are some that are 

 least inclined to protest at irregular 

 treatment. Fortunately it does not follow 

 that the flowers most difficult to grow 

 are those most beautiful ; the least 

 exacting make a rock garden of capti- 

 vating charm. Of plants that delight to 

 spread over sun-scorched stony banks, 

 and hang a fringe of flower and foliage 

 across unshadowed rocks, are the Mad- 

 wort or Yellow Alyssum. Rock Rose and 

 Rock Cress, Cistus, Spanish and Moon- 

 light Broom, Scotch Heather and Irish 

 Heath, some of the Rockfoils and 

 Alpine Pinks, \\hile shady nooks and 

 crannies rely for their blossom largely on 

 Alpine Primroses and Orchids, Wood 

 Lilies, Wood Anemones, the Pyrenean 

 Ramondia, Ferns in great variety. King 

 Cups and Alpine Buttercups, and the 

 Balearic Sandwort, that spreads a veil of 

 green over barren rocks, and in summer 

 hides both beneath countless tiny blossoms 

 of purest white. When such as these are 

 in bloom the rock garden is in its fullest 

 beauty, its most enchanting mood, and 

 gives the greatest joy to the majority of 

 flower lovers. But the rock garden has 

 also another phase of beauty that appeals 

 no less successfully, though less osten- 

 tatiously, to those who understand its 

 ways. For there comes a time when the 

 brilliant masses of blossom, surpassingly 

 beautiful though they may be, fail to 

 satisfy the longings of the enthusiast. 

 He turns for perfect enjoyment to in- 

 dividual plants, to those that give less 

 prodigally of their bloom, and blossom 

 only when experience has taught exactly 

 how they should be grown. 



Wall gardening may be described as at 

 once one of the oldest and one of the 

 newest ways of growing flowers. Are 

 there not wall gardens sown by Nature 

 herself centuries ago, walls whose stones 

 are hidden beneath moss and lichen, 

 whose every chink and crack is filled with 

 Fern or other wilding ? Yes, Nature's 

 wall gardens arc beautifully old, yet it is 

 only within recent years that growing 



flowers in walls has become one of the 

 fashionable ways of gardening. Now, 

 in many gardens one sees specially made 

 " dry " walls, built against banks of soil, 

 without cement and without mortar, and, 

 in due time, draped with masses of 

 fairest flowers. Spaces are left between 

 the stones, seeds or tiny plants are planted 

 in the chinks, and soon their roots search 

 deep in the soil behind. 



To make a real wall garden one must 

 begin early, for it is only beautiful when 

 it has grown okl. This is true of all 

 gardens, but it is especially true of the wall 

 garden. The greatest charm clings to the 

 wall gardens that are old — old only in flight 

 of years — those draped with lovely care- 

 lessness by ivy masses, whose crumbling 

 walls are pierced by Ferns and topped 

 by stunted Wallflowers, by casual bird- 

 sown rowan or bramble, by beautiful 

 wind-sown weeds. The artificial wall 

 garden can scarcely ever hope to possess 

 that abandon, that charm of perfect 

 naturalness by which the wild wall gardens 

 are distinguished. Still, if the seeds and 

 plants are left to grow just how and 

 where they please, passing years serve 

 but to increase the beauty of the garden 

 in the wall. Planted at the top of the 

 wall where there is good depth of soil, 

 there should be masses of purple and white 

 Arabis, of evergreen Candytuft, throwing 

 a light drapery of leaf and blossom across 

 the rocky face and in the chinks and 

 crevices. Wallflowers, Rockfoils, par- 

 ticularly the queen of all Saxifrages, 

 the Pyramidal Rockfoil, Ferns self-sown, 

 Snapdragons, Alj)ine Pink and Catchfly, 

 patches of Heather, and the Ramondia 

 that plants its broad leaves flat against 

 the face of the wall and crowns these with 

 blue and yellow blossoms. The wall of 

 flowers is essentially a garden where the 

 fittest are allowed to survive, and the 

 tending is left to Nature. 



Water gardens vary greatly in size, in 

 aspect and in situation, but these things 

 matter little if a sense of peace is all-per- 

 vading. A sense of repose should be 

 insej^arably associated with the water 

 garden, so that at high noon in full summer . 

 time one may turn from gaudy flower- 

 filled beds and borders for restful thoughts 

 and subtle daylight dreams, that, for the 

 moment, throw a veil over the world of 



