PLAYTHINGS FOR 
THE ADVENTUROUS IGNORANT 
ALICE RATHBONE 
Editor’s Note: — Readers of The Garden Magazine who recall Miss Rathbone’s de- 
lightful “ Adventures Among The Sedums” (April, 1919) will welcome this latest adventure of 
hers among the lowly Sempervivums, and will find refreshment for work-weary spirits in her 
whimsical and affectionate description of these newly won garden friends. 
ONG live the “live-long” Sempervivums — they of the 
order of the rosette! A not improbable wish, since a 
specimen of this “ever-living” class of plants is known 
to have come back to life after being pressed for eight- 
een months in a herbarium. 
Once they are established, it is not easy to lose the chic “little 
roses” that are too scant trouble to be associated with the word 
work, and so we’ve dubbed them garden playthings. We like, 
too, to call our Sempervivums by the more familiar name of 
Houseleeks as being better suited to their informal use as toys — 
very much alive toys, delightful to play with. This delight 
is enhanced, it seems to me, if one goes out to trifle with House- 
leeks in a childlike state of mental unpreparedness. 
1 wonder if I dare so openly confess the heretical attitude of 
mind to which this pastime has led me — nothing less, in truth, 
than the firmly settled conviction that my woeful lack of House- 
leek information more than doubled the fun. What folly to be 
wise, indeed, when the proved bliss of ignorance holds the ever- 
alluring charm of surprise, the joy of discovery! 
How truly thankful was I to be unfamiliar with every detail 
of the amazing behavior of which the Houseleek is capable when, 
last summer, a series of transformation scenes, staged for con- 
tinuous performance in my garden, went forward almost to the 
end, before I could at all make out the drift of the mysterious 
doings which left a lasting sense of wonderful adventure. 
HOUSELEEK TOWER 
IN FULL BLOOM 
One of the fascinating, 
freakish surprises that the 
Sempervivums are liable to 
spring at any time. (Va- 
riety tectorum shown here) 
rugged character forbids it. And while they lay no claim to 
beauty (in the Rose or Lily sense), their pretty rosettes of vary- 
ing green, tipped, in some varieties, with pink or reddish brown, 
have a way of making their own appeal, in common with all the 
little things that, perhaps because they never grow up, always 
seem young, and so, amusing. 
Like the Sedums, they have humble charm — albeit less deli- 
cately natured than these more graceful and floriferous kindred; 
but Sempervivums, too, if grown in their logical setting of stones, 
are apt to creep very closely into one’s garden likings as ac- 
quaintance with them ripens. Whenever I see one Houseleek 
rosette growing apart from its fellows, a newspaper description 
of Sir James Barrie comes to mind. It was given by a woman in 
Kensington Gardens who was for a time his neighbor, though 
she did not know him. “The little man who is all head, ’’was the 
manner in which she referred to him, “but a perfect dear.” 
D AILY I watched a new, strange upright growth take form 
beside my largest Houseleek, a little green tower that rose, 
like a miniature campanile, close to the low, slightly domed 
Houseleek now transformed into a cathedral itself roofed and 
sided, like its campanile, with the overlapping dark green tiles of 
Houseleek leaves. 
As the tower-like structure grew I half expected to see tiny 
bells blossom out in regular order along its sides, after the fashion 
of a Chinese pagoda. That might as well happen as anything 
else, while this performance was going on and as only the most 
preposterous possibilities count in Wonderland, it will hardly do, 
perhaps, to state flatly that a pagoda effect could not have been 
arranged. What the thing chose to do, however, was different. 
Its real object was revealed when flower buds looked out from 
the top of the tower, like Sister Anne in the Bluebeard story. 
The flowers as they developed seemed to the unaided eye scarce 
worthy of the marvelous pedestal created for them, of such a 
very dull pink, and so slightly open were they; but under the 
microscope what glistening beauty they disclosed, all showered 
with dewy particles like an Ice-plant ! 
When its excuse for being was over, the structure leaned and 
at last collapsed like Saint Mark’s campanile at Venice, thus 
ending the spectacular career of the little Houseleek tower. 
All this was done by the Common Houseleek (Sempervivum 
tectorum), best known of its tribe; its popular name of Hen-and- 
chickens obviously suggested by the young shoots close clust- 
ered around the old rosette. Would that one might grow 
real hens and chickens with as little trouble and outlay as these 
vegetable fowls cause! For Houseleeks are — such of them as I 
know, at least — no trouble at all after their simple needs of 
sunshine and poor soil have been attended to. There is, in 
short, no trace of fussiness about them. The strength of their 
Q UITE apart from a mere catalogue of the obvious merits of 
Sempervivums (and Sedums, too) is their quality of 
domesticity. By whatever means of composite suggest- 
ion — whether from their habit of growing upon old-country 
housetops, or by the mere power of the very names associated 
with them in different sections— some way or other one feels with 
Sempervivums, as they settle themselves for life in one’s garden, 
that spirit of satisfying performance and peace which broods 
over happy, long-established dwelling places. The Houseleek 
or Homewort belongs, indeed, so plainly to its own family circle, 
on its own particular hearth-stone that it seems out of character 
to see it ranged with military precision along perfectly straight 
lines. Yet thus are its rosettes most familiarly seen in public 
places, outlining designs with rather painful formality. If 
allowed to make their own growing arrangements, however, 
they add much to the interest of a garden where permanent 
edgings of brick or stone are used. In such case, the furnishing' 
of corners becomes of especial interest, and a quite successful 
effort in that line of business is the result of my busy Houseleeks’ 
quick response to the idea of informal corner decoration. 
On the other hand, here is an instance where the formal may 
be said to be the natural way of Sempervivum growth. S. 
fimbriatum came from the plantsman a perfect thing, showing 
nature in one of her exact moods. The tiny flower-pot was 
completely covered with its little roses, of a beautiful green, 
one in the centre and six surrounding it, quite in a “ ring around a 
rosy” way, delightful to behold. But this, of course, was not its 
fixed manner of increase — by ever-extending concentric circles 
— and it soon started off at random from the first wreath of 
rosettes. Better so, perhaps, else it might have come, in time, 
too near in resemblance to an old-fashioned, braided rug, for 
appropriate use in a garden. 
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