loo TOWN AND WINDOW GARDENING 



lovely on grey stone. Cerastium's grey foliage should 

 always rove about among the green things ; grey leaves are 

 so pretty, and there are many plants of this colour. The 

 Cotton plant, often called French Lavender, is a good one. 

 Anemone apennina is a wall and rock plant that ought to be 

 mentioned first instead of last ; Anemone slyvestris and 

 hepatica also love the stones, and so do the homely House- 

 leeks that remind us of cottage roofs, and the grey-green 

 Cobweb-leeks that are smothered in downy thread. 



It would be quite easy to make a beautiful rock or wall 

 garden without going away from our own country to 

 people it ; many of our common native stone-loving plants 

 are so good. Snap-dragons are grand, and we could have 

 Foxgloves, the great Mulleins and the delicate Stitchwort, 

 the shining Crane's-bell — so scarlet of leaf as summer 

 wanes — the Wall-Pennywort, and the pink-flowered tiny 

 Toad-flax. Some Ferns, too, could find a place in it, 

 Cetrach and Wall-Rue in the sun, and Polypody and the 

 black-stemmed Adiantum nigrum anywhere. Polypodies 

 run freely about the joints of walls, and will keep green 

 all the winter. 



The three commonest of our English wall-plants are 

 those we love most dearly ; they are Thrift, Wallflower, 

 and Red Valerian. Our own Valerian was brought from 

 the top of a castle-wall in the Isle of Wight, close to the 

 sea, wind-swept and bathed in sunshine. There were 

 masses of it, in patches of deep crimson ; we took some 

 while it was in full flower, in spite of the risk. No easy 

 matter was it to get a root, so deeply had every one gone 

 down between the stones, but we managed to secure one or 

 two with fibre on them, and these have grown and spread. 

 Wallflowers are never so happy as on stone-work with 

 air and light all round them, and they are all the better 

 for the slight protection given by a wall. Ivy-leaved 

 Toad-flax was growing merrily near the Valerian, and 

 was not half so difficult to get out. All of these are now 



