DWARF-GROWING PLANTS 



Dwarf plants are more liable to be over-run than those 

 of taller growth since they have to compete with native 

 trailers as well as with plants of higher stature, and are 

 thus more likely to be shut out from the sun and its 

 life-giving rays. For such it is necessary that sites 

 should be chosen where dense-growing herbage that 

 would in all probability overwhelm them is absent. Mossy 

 banks, knolls around tree-boles, spaces about the roots 

 of upturned patriarchs of the wood, which may easily 

 be kept clear of weeds, and similar spots offer desirable 

 homes for many of these, while others are better suited 

 by craggy ledge, fissures in a cliff-face, gravelly slope 

 or moist, peaty bog-land. Where a low cliff or disused 

 quarry is included in the grounds this may often, by a 

 certain amount of additional labour, be converted into 

 an excellent rock garden. One has only to think of the 

 almost precipitous rock cuttings of a former day often 

 met with in England, which apparently offer but the 

 scantiest opportunity for root-hold, yet are clothed from 

 summit to base with an infinite variety of vegetation, 

 to realise the possibilities afforded by the living cliff. 

 Ledges may be cut, wide at one place and narrowing 

 gradually away to a nail's-breadth, some in the full sun- 

 shine and some in a shady exposure, while the quarried 

 stone that falls to the base may be mixed little by little, 

 as the work proceeds, with gritty compost fitted for the 

 needs of the plants destined to occupy it, until it forms 

 a solid bank of rock and soil without interstices into 

 which the roots may run down many feet, clinging 



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