But it does not matter what nervous wrecks Virginia and Ursula may have landed at the door overnight, the first morning sees them up with the lark and out gardening; and one of the earliest sounds you hear is the clink of the brown pitcher on the stones, as Virginia sets it down after filling it at the little spring outside the garden gate. This is a thirsty garden; it is everywhere on the slope, remember, and is composed of the lightest soil imaginable with rock everywhere beneath. As fast as you put water on it, it runs away downhill; hence, a moment’s leisure, morning or evening, always means some pitchers of water for the garden.
All the cottages on the hillside seem to have been built in the same way. Someone evidently hunted about for a few feet of land where it was slightly less sloping than the rest, and within reach of a spring of water, and this plot he levelled a bit by excavating the big boulders and smaller stones which make up our substratum, and often the top-stratum too. Then if the piece of land wasn’t quite large enough, he cut away part of the hill behind, banking it up with some of the biggest of the boulders, to keep it from tumbling down on to the piece he had cleared.
Next he excavated more rocky pieces from the up-and-down land around his clearing; this gave him a bit of clean ground for a garden, and also provided him with enough stone to build his habitation. Any stone he might have over he made into a wall around his plot, by the simple process of piling one piece on top of another. That, apparently, is all man does to the place. Then Nature sets to work; and, oh, what festoons of loveliness she flings over all!
As several different owners have had a hand at my particular cottage, the garden has been extended in various directions, but always requiring stone walls to prop it up. Hence you get a moderately level patch, with a drop of four or six feet over the edge of the garden-bed.
A few rough stone steps take you down to the next level, where there is another bit of garden, the steps themselves sprouting in every chink, with wild strawberry, primroses, ferns, columbines, and a stray Canterbury bell. In this way the cottage is surrounded with steps going up or going down, with a flower-bed running along here, and some more a few feet lower down; another terrace of flowers and some more steps (nearly smothered with big periwinkle, these are) take you down to an absurd lawn, that some enterprising person levelled up so delightfully on the tilt that neither chair nor table will remain where you place it! If they roll far enough, they go over the edge of the lawn, a drop of about twenty feet, into the lower orchard! Nevertheless, this lawn is popular, because it is edged at one side with white and pink moss rose-trees.
Thus perhaps you can picture it—big beds and little beds, some running one way, some spreading out in another direction; sometimes large patches where flowers grow by the quarter-acre; sometimes little scraps and corners no bigger than a hearth-rug, where we managed to dig out some more stones, and make a further bit of clearing. But everywhere you go there are the big plateaux or little terraces supported by massive grey stone walls, which vary from two to twenty feet in height, according to the amount of hillside they are required to prop up.
And how these walls bloom! Ivy and moss and ferns seem to love them, for all the local walls sprout ferns without any apparent provocation, and the walls about this garden are no exception.
But, in addition, white arabis hangs over in cascades, in the spring, and you see then why the country people call it “Snow-on-the-Mountains”; and mingling with the white is the exquisite mauve variety; wallflowers of lovely colouring, rose pink, deep purple, pale primrose, bright orange, as well as the richly-streaked brown-and-yellow flowers, bloom gaily on the rocky ledges; snapdragons flower later, with nasturtiums, and even some blue-eyed forget-me-nots have sown themselves up there, and bloom with the rest. Honesty plants have established themselves in the crevices; masses of wild Herb Robert have been allowed to remain; and carpeting everything are all manner of sedums, and Alpine and ice plants, some with grey-green foliage and ruby-coloured stems, some with white flowers, some with crimson; and in the hottest places there are clumps of houseleeks looking sturdy and homely.
Certain weeks in the year the tops of some of the walls are a golden mass when the yellow stonecrop is in bloom; but whatever the season, there is always something to look at—something holding up a brave head and preaching as loudly as ever a plant can preach of the advantages of making the best of your surroundings.
Does the wall face a sunless north? Very well; out come the ferns and up creeps the ivy; the Rock Stonecrop, with its blue-green stems and leaves (looking almost like a huge moss) fills every shady spot it can find, seemingly appearing from nowhere.