House & Garden 
space is limited and who must make the most 
of every nook and cranny. How by a little 
care a dry wall may be made to yield har¬ 
vests of tiny bloom, how the rock-loving 
things from the ends of the earth, or from 
the nearest hillside may he gathered together, 
what sorts will do best on the sunny side of 
the wall and what in the shade, all these are 
presented with examples of such beauty as 
to make one want to get to work with rocks 
and seeds at once. But just here a word of 
caution is in order. The growing of plants 
on an old wall in the south ot England (for 
it is there Miss Jekyll has her garden) is a 
far different thing from growing them under 
such circumstances as one often finds in 
America. A moist climate with a tempera¬ 
ture rarely reaching eighty-five degrees pre¬ 
sents conditions so different from that of a 
place where for thirty days at a stretch the 
thermometer may go to one hundred and 
where the air is as dry as a chip, that the 
picture of the old wall clothed with bloom 
has to be greatly modified for many of us 
here. But that the rock-garden of the best 
type is no impossibility even on this side of 
the Atlantic has been proved by the Sargent 
garden in Brookline near Boston, where 
there may be seen in early spring a wealth 
of blossom equal to anything in Miss 
Jekyll’s book. 
As for the water plants they do not fear 
the heat, and nearly all that Miss Jekyll has 
to say about them is just as true of them 
here as in England. Stretches of water in the 
garden have time out of mind been one of 
its greatest charms ; and though our century 
shows no advance beyond such pictures as 
that of the old English manor, with its 
formal pool, or the long vista of the Genera- 
liffe, yet in the freer treatment of sheets of 
water or little streams with their sedgy mar¬ 
gins we have made great advances, and 
especially is this true ot the increased num¬ 
ber and variety of species at our command. 
Of all these resources the book treats, and 
its advice as to what should be attempted 
and what is best left alone in the water garden 
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