CHAPTER VII 
HEN building walls, be generous and do not cramp a 
fine creeper for the sake of a few feet of bricks and 
mortar. I schemed a wall a good few years ago, and 
thought that eight feet was high enough for anything invited to 
ascend ; but far from it. Ambitious things were at the top in 
no time, and some have easily climbed to the summit of pillars 
on the wall which were never set there for them. Now certain 
creepers wrestle with the roses for a row of arches that connect 
the pillars, and clematis and vine, bignonia and ercilla, pueraria 
and smilax have ignored my arrangements in favour of their own 
more extensive programme. 
Kadsura japonica will probably follow suit; but this fine, 
half-hardy climber with small, pendent white flowers and cori- 
aceous leaves, though in brisk advance, has not yet been here 
long enough to break boundaries. There is a Kadsura with 
variegated foliage—not always an additional charm—but in the 
case of this shrub possibly an advantage. 
Kalanchoe was much in evidence a year ago, but one does not 
see these interesting greenhouse crassulas so often now. I never 
much admired them. 
Kalmia latifolia is a great shrub, given proper conditions. 
The best that I have seen in Devon grew among the foothills 
of Dartmoor in cool deep peat; but none in England, I suspect, 
have attained the twenty feet recorded from this Kalmia’s home 
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