CHAPTER XVIII 

 HEATHS IN THE ROCK GARDEN 



THE hardy Heath — the term is used advisedly to 

 separate those common to our own land and 

 countries equally cold from those inhabiting- South- 

 west France, Spain and Portugal — is a host in itself, 

 and to-day no garden of any pretensions is complete 

 without a well-equipped Heath garden of its own. For 

 some years these plants have been winning their way 

 into favour with the result that we see broad stretches 

 of them in many directions ; now as fringes or border- 

 ings, sometimes massed in beds, on the lawn or playing 

 the part of carpeters to plants of taller growth, though 

 best of all, perhaps, apart from the heath garden itself, 

 when employed as a groundwork to choice shrubs, 

 constituting great belts to the shrubbery, or flanking 

 the entrances to the rock garden in their own inimit- 

 able way. There is only one way of dealing with these 

 plants in gardens if we would get more than a frac- 

 tional part of the beauty and colour warmth they are 

 capable of giving, and that is to group them freely in 

 masses. In no other way are they of half the value, 

 and the fact is writ large on peaty waste and moorland 

 in many parts of these islands. It is, indeed, due to the 

 heath alone that thousands of acres of British land- 

 scape are beautiful year by year by plants inimitable in 

 colour effects, and in their powers of endurance while 

 growing in the poorest of soils. In these, indeed, they 

 brave the fiercest summer sun we experience ; though, 

 in all probability, their own spread and density of 

 growth shield them from much harm in the direction 

 indicated. 



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