92 GARDENS PAST AND PRESENT 



take root and in due time drape the bare wall 

 with gardens of beauty. Somehow the effort did 

 not always succeed, for bungling human ringers, 

 with the best will in the world to aid them, have 

 not the fairylike deftness of the puff of wind 

 which will, in a moment, waft a seed into the 

 very cranny that is made for it, leaving it there 

 for rain and sunshine to work the rest of the 

 miracle. 



In Wales it is a common thing to see turfs, 

 cut from the roadside, laid on the top of low 

 cottage walls for the express purpose of growing 

 flowers; and the finest clumps of rock cress and 

 pinks, and occasionally dwarf irises, to be seen 

 anywhere, are the result the trailers hanging over 

 the crest of the wall in curtain-like masses, full of 

 flower in their season. 



These, however, were but first attempts at wall 

 gardening ; and the makers of new gardens have 

 now an added joy which was unthought of 

 even a few years ago, for dry-walling has been 

 devised. 



What, then, is meant by dry-walling for garden 

 purposes ? 



It is rough stone work prepared expressly for 

 the accommodation of suitable plants by laying 

 the courses of stone on beds of garden soil, filling 

 in as well all interstices of the joints, and using 

 mortar only where it is absolutely necessary for 

 the strengthening of the fabric of the wall. It 

 may be employed for dividing walls of low stature, 

 in some sort after the rough and ready method 

 of the stone dykes of Somersetshire and elsewhere ; 



