. Alpine flowers for English gardens . Mountain plants. Part I. RUIN AND WALL GARDENS. 37 By building a rough stone wall, and packing the intervals as firmly as possible with loam and sandy peat, and putting, perhaps, a little mortar on the outside of the largest interstices, a host of brilliant gems may be grown with almost as little attention as we bestow on the common Ivy. Thoroughly consolidated, the materials of the wall would afford precisely the kind of nutriment required by the plants. The wall would prove a more congenial home to many species than any but the best constructed rock- ga
. Alpine flowers for English gardens . Mountain plants. Part I. RUIN AND WALL GARDENS. 37 By building a rough stone wall, and packing the intervals as firmly as possible with loam and sandy peat, and putting, perhaps, a little mortar on the outside of the largest interstices, a host of brilliant gems may be grown with almost as little attention as we bestow on the common Ivy. Thoroughly consolidated, the materials of the wall would afford precisely the kind of nutriment required by the plants. The wall would prove a more congenial home to many species than any but the best constructed rock- garden. In many parts of the country the rains would keep the walls in a sufficiently moist condition, the top being always left somewhat concave ; in dry districts a perforated copper pipe laid along the top will diffuse the requisite moisture. In very moist places natives of wet rocks and trailing plants like the Linnaa, might be interspersed here and there among the other alpines ;. 4 '-iiffi^irsssBPt*"®*^' Fig. 32.—A rude stone wall covered with alpine plants. in dry ones it would be desirable to plant chiefly the Saxifragas, Sedums, small Campanulas, Linarias, and subjects that, even in hotter countries than ours, find a home on the sunniest and barest crags. The chief care in the management of this wall of alpine flowers would be in preventing weeds or coarse plants from taking root and overrunning the choice gems. When these are once observed, they can be easily prevented from making any further progress by continually cutting off their shoots as they appear; it would never be necessary to disturb the wall even in the case of a thriving Convolvulus. The wall of alpine plants may be placed in any convenient position in or near the garden : there is no reason why a portion of the walls usually devoted to climbers should not be prepared as I describe. The boundary walls of multitudes of small gardens would look better graced by alpine flowers than bare as they usually
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, bookpublisherlondo, bookyear1870
