PLANTS WORTH GROWING 187 
grows about two feet high, and is best seen in a 
mass, individual plants being apt to look somewhat 
thin and straggling. But the best of the Saponarias 
is ocymoides, a trailer with slender, dark red stems 
clothed with neat, rounded foliage, and yielding 
rosy pink flowers in such profusion that the plant 
assumes the appearance of a bright-hued carpet. 
This plant is invaluable for stone walls, for trailing 
down steep banks, or for carpeting beds where taller 
plants of stiff, erect growth are thinly planted. 
It grows quickly from seed, and may also be rooted 
from cuttings. 
Saxifraga. — Although more generally treated as 
Alpines than border plants, quite a number of the 
Saxifrages are extremely useful as edgings, or as 
carpeting plants, while some are free and showy 
enough to be used as bedding plants. The mossy 
section furnish the best for edging, and whilst they 
may generally be regarded as shade-loving plants, 
they will do quite well in full sun if their roots can 
penetrate deeply in the soil or get beneath flat 
stones embedded in the surface. Thus a bed edged 
with rough stones may be made very effective by 
planting varieties of Sax. hypnoides, Wallaceii or 
trifurcata between the stones. 
The Geum section and Sax umbrosa (London 
Pride) make large rosettes of rounded and toothed 
leaves, throwing up from the centres light airy 
panicles of pinkish flowers, and Sax granulata in 
single and double formsis a fine plant when natural- 
