122 



Gardens for Small Country Houses. 



size there would be columbines in quantity, white foxgloves and mulleins growing 

 with splendid vigour and enjoying the cool root-run among the stones. 



The way the walls are put up is of the utmost importance, for on the way it is 

 done depends not only the appearance but the stability. Dry walling made rightly 

 may be carried up twelve feet or more, even in recently disturbed soil, while if wrongly 

 or negligently done a wall only three feet high will come down with the first heavy 

 storm of rain. The following description will help those who wish to build their own 

 walls, and to an intelligent amateur there is hardly a department of garden work 

 that is more interesting and even delightful, especially where there is good local 

 stone. Where there is no stone a dry wall can be built of brick, but this is duller work 

 and is best done by a trained bricklayer. In some cases, in brick retaining walls 

 a brick or half-brick is left out to give more space for inserting plants, or the whole is 

 built in mortar, leaving such spaces only for planting ; but the earth joint throughout 

 is rather more satisfactory, giving more freedom for the shaping of the groups. 



The wall should lie back a little — " batter back " is the technical word, derived, 

 no doubt, as are so many of our words for tools and building, from the French. It 



FIG. 157. 



-A TEN-FOOT WALL PLANTED WITH GYPSOPHILA, VALERIAN, SANTOLINA, 

 CERASTIUM, LUPINES AND ROSEMARY AT TOP. 



ROCK PINKS AND 



suggests a near relationship to abattrc, to beat down or beat back. As a good general 

 rule it may batter back in the proportion of one foot in six of height. Everj^"" stone, 

 lying on its natural bed at right angles to the sloped-back face, has the back a little 

 lower than the front. It follows that every drop of rain that falls on the face of the 

 wall runs into the next joint, to the benefit of the plants. If a dry waU is built on 

 sohd ground it needs but little foundation. Two thin courses under ground will be 

 enough. The tilting back of the stones is begun under ground, then the upper 

 courses follow naturally. A bed of earth is laid between each course and the ends of 

 the stones, as if it was mortar. As the work comes out of the ground, and, indeed, 

 from the very beginning, the loose soil is rammed m behind and between all the stones 

 that project backward. It is upon firm and quite conscientious ramming that the 

 stabihty of the waU depends. Labourers are apt to scamp it ; even experienced 

 builders and foremen, unless they have had special experience in dry walling, do not 

 give it the unremitting attention that it requires. This tight ramming cannot be too 

 strongly insisted on or the absolute need of it too often repeated. Ram as tightly 



