Carpet Plants 



lovely pale blue flowers, which last a long time, 

 and it does not object to a crocus or two coming 

 up in its midst, though it would not like a thick 

 mass. Altogether, I think it one of my most 

 useful plants for growing in full sun, and though 

 I call it a carpet plant, it is excellent also as what 

 I may call a curtain or tapestry plant. I know 

 an old brick kitchen-garden wall in Devonshire 

 on the top of which a plant of this campanula 

 had found a suitable home, and from the top of 

 the wall the plant has spread downwards, rooting 

 and sowing itself in every coin of vantage till 

 it has covered the wall for several yards in 

 length. 



I reckon many of the acaenas among good 

 carpet plants, if only the winter is not too severe ; 

 but in a very severe winter the plants are apt to 

 become bare in places and so lose their beauty 

 for a time, but they generally recover it soon, and 

 one of them A. pinnatifida will generally be a 

 close green carpet through even a hard winter. 

 These acsenas are mostly from South America 

 and New Zealand, and are of very various 

 colours, one very hardy one, A. inermis, being of 

 a decided slate colour ; and they all produce 

 burs, with thorns of different shapes, but all more 

 or less clinging to anything that touches them ; 

 and it is on account of these burs that the 

 plants get their name from the Greek a-Aana, a 

 thorn or goad. 



I have not space to speak of many other good 

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