A ROCKERY IN EARLY SUMMER
It would be quite easy to make a beautiful rock or wall garden without going away from our own country to people it; many of our common native stone-loving plants are so good. Snap-dragons are grand, and we could have Foxgloves, the great Mulleins and the delicate Stitchwort, the shining Crane’s-bell—so scarlet of leaf as summer wanes—the Wall-Pennywort, and the pink-flowered tiny Toad-flax. Some Ferns, too, could find a place in it, Cetrach and Wall-Rue in the sun, and Polypody and the black-stemmed Adiantum nigrum anywhere. Polypodies run freely about the joints of walls, and will keep green all the winter.
The three commonest of our English wall-plants are those we love most dearly; they are Thrift, Wallflower, and Red Valerian. Our own Valerian was brought from the top of a castle-wall in the Isle of Wight, close to the sea, wind-swept and bathed in sunshine. There were masses of it, in patches of deep crimson; we took some while it was in full flower, in spite of the risk. No easy matter was it to get a root, so deeply had every one gone down between the stones, but we managed to secure one or two with fibre on them, and these have grown and spread. Wallflowers are never so happy as on stone-work with air and light all round them, and they are all the better for the slight protection given by a wall. Ivy-leaved Toad-flax was growing merrily near the Valerian, and was not half so difficult to get out. All of these are now quite content in the suburban garden to which they were brought, and in which they thrive and bloom, the red Valerian a special joy to every pussy-cat.
One pleasing thought may cheer the most disheartened while going through the troubles of making a rockery; it will be a delicious salve to one’s conscience when running away with roots of dainty little plants from wall, or moor, or mountain, either in England or abroad, to know that at home a comfortable shelter is awaiting them where not even the Edelweis need feel the pangs of Heimweh. Flowers we bring home that live and grow are about the pleasantest log-books it is possible to possess.
“Oh, to what uses shall we put
The wild weed-flower that simply blows?”
This is what Tennyson says, and the question is easily answered by another: Could it have a better use than to bring happiness to those who dearly love the country and its flowers, but are obliged by stress of circumstance to live their lives in towns?