42 Hardy Plants for Cottage Gardens 
may be of value to many amateurs. A stone wall three feet 
high built southeast or south or west of a bed not only shades 
the roots of plants from the hot rays of the sun, but in the cool 
shadow of it, evaporation does not go on as in the open, and 
the soil of a dry exposed bed, when thus protected, is rendered 
damp and shaded for a good part of the day. Several hours of 
direct sunshine are good, but few plants can stand it all day. 
Also in winter these walls catch the snow and pile deep drifts 
that are a perfect protection to even tender perennials. Al- 
though a portion of the garden lies on a low level, the greater 
part of it is three and six and even eight feet above that level; 
yet, when covered with snow, it presents a smooth sloping un- 
broken surface under which all inequalities of height disap- 
pear. In the shadow of the walls the snow lies late upon the 
beds in the spring, which saves the plants from the alternate 
thawing and freezing that are so disastrous. In some in- 
stances these walls merely face the cutting of a bank that rises 
from two to three feet above a bed, and sometimes I have 
built them up from the ground in a double row of rocks. I 
note that plants in these shaded beds flourish amazingly and 
never suffer from drought no matter how prolonged it may be; 
this means an economy of labor in watering. 
Aside from the utility I like the strong contrast of tender 
plant life against the stern granite. The Japanese have used 
stones as one of the chief adornments of their gardens, and 
while we cannot and need not imitate their use of them, we 
can make them serve in our own way. I have a broken 
jagged stone almost four feet high at the corner of one of my 
walls, that I always speak of as a corner-stone of happiness, 
so great is my pleasure in seeing it serve as a background in 
turn to rock columbine, harebells, meadow rue, Japanese iris, 
clematis, Physostegia and Michaelmas daisy. 
Nothing could be more favorable to the growth of deep- 
