each side of the fireplace we made a series of steps from our plentiful supply of stones, hence the descriptive label.
I was instructed to plant what I could between the stones, to relieve the hard angular lines, At that time it was literally a case of making bricks without straw as I had practically nothing to use. Looking round the garden I came upon some stonecrop and pounced on it as an answer to prayer. There wasn’t very much and I broke it into small pieces and poked them between the stones. I had no idea that when it settles down in a place it not only starts raising a family but goes in for founding a dynasty as well. I think its name is Sedum spurium and it is the most inveterate invader I have ever met. Sometimes in the summer my heart softens when I see its really pretty flat pink rosettes, but most of the time it is war. Its round brown stems creep down walls, intertwine themselves in its classier neighbours, push under stones and across paths, taking possession with grim determination. If, by an oversight, it is allowed to stay on a piece of a flower bed for more than a minute, in two minutes that flower bed will be a solid mat of stonecrop of a particularly luxuriant quality. Every year I pull out barrowloads of it and I know I shall continue to do so until I die.
Perhaps an even greater error was the introduction of helxine, popularly called ‘Mind your own business’, why I cannot think, because that is the one thing it does not do. I had often seen it bubbling out of pots in cottage windows, and when I saw it spilling out of a broken-down greenhouse of an empty house I thought how pretty and green it was, and how nicely it would help me to soften the grim stones of the old fireplace and the Coliseum. So when a friend offered me some I accepted it with great enthusiasm. She brought it to me in a roll, like a piece of carpet, and I carefully broke it into hundreds of little pieces, tucking them in with love, and watering them with care, and looked forward to a nice little green line between my stones. Helxine is more attractive to look at than stonecrop, except that it does not flower, at least not visibly, but it is even more affectionate. Again I know that I shall be scrapping it from my beds and from under stones for the rest of my days. I tried to cover the top of the old fireplace with this busy little carpeter, but it does not care to come out in the open. Up the sides as much as you like, and everywhere else where it is damp and moist, but not where I most wanted it. Later I used creeping thymes to cover the unsightly broken wall. They like to be hot and dry, and will clamber about in the sun most obligingly.
After I had made the terraced garden I had more walls to play with than I knew what to do with. I grew aubrieta from seed, all kinds of arabis, including the double variety and shades of pink and rose, also Arabis blepharophylla , which one so seldom sees, but which is an excellent wall plant with its tight rosettes of deep green leaves and stiff heads of magenta flowers. One plant of Dianthus caesius gave me innumerable cuttings, and all the rock campanulas were used ad infinitum. Saxifrages were stuffed into crannies, in some places I planted gypsophila to foam over the stones, in another Saponaria ocymoides. The trailing Geranium Traversii , Pritchard’s var., is good on a high wall, as it is generous with its trails, while Geranium sanguineum lancastiense can be used on top of a wall or in a rock crevice.
The rough wall we made round the lawn was another place where I could grow rock plants. Rock roses and androsaces, aethionemas and shrubby thymes thrive in that wall. I grow great mounds of alyssum, more of the lemon coloured variety than the golden, here and there a small lavender or silver plant such as Helichrysum plicatum , and the green leaved Dianthus multiflorus , with its bright cerise flowers, and the salmon pink version, Emil Pare. The perennial cheiranthus and erysimums are
I was instructed to plant what I could between the stones, to relieve the hard angular lines, At that time it was literally a case of making bricks without straw as I had practically nothing to use. Looking round the garden I came upon some stonecrop and pounced on it as an answer to prayer. There wasn’t very much and I broke it into small pieces and poked them between the stones. I had no idea that when it settles down in a place it not only starts raising a family but goes in for founding a dynasty as well. I think its name is Sedum spurium and it is the most inveterate invader I have ever met. Sometimes in the summer my heart softens when I see its really pretty flat pink rosettes, but most of the time it is war. Its round brown stems creep down walls, intertwine themselves in its classier neighbours, push under stones and across paths, taking possession with grim determination. If, by an oversight, it is allowed to stay on a piece of a flower bed for more than a minute, in two minutes that flower bed will be a solid mat of stonecrop of a particularly luxuriant quality. Every year I pull out barrowloads of it and I know I shall continue to do so until I die.
Perhaps an even greater error was the introduction of helxine, popularly called ‘Mind your own business’, why I cannot think, because that is the one thing it does not do. I had often seen it bubbling out of pots in cottage windows, and when I saw it spilling out of a broken-down greenhouse of an empty house I thought how pretty and green it was, and how nicely it would help me to soften the grim stones of the old fireplace and the Coliseum. So when a friend offered me some I accepted it with great enthusiasm. She brought it to me in a roll, like a piece of carpet, and I carefully broke it into hundreds of little pieces, tucking them in with love, and watering them with care, and looked forward to a nice little green line between my stones. Helxine is more attractive to look at than stonecrop, except that it does not flower, at least not visibly, but it is even more affectionate. Again I know that I shall be scrapping it from my beds and from under stones for the rest of my days. I tried to cover the top of the old fireplace with this busy little carpeter, but it does not care to come out in the open. Up the sides as much as you like, and everywhere else where it is damp and moist, but not where I most wanted it. Later I used creeping thymes to cover the unsightly broken wall. They like to be hot and dry, and will clamber about in the sun most obligingly.
After I had made the terraced garden I had more walls to play with than I knew what to do with. I grew aubrieta from seed, all kinds of arabis, including the double variety and shades of pink and rose, also Arabis blepharophylla , which one so seldom sees, but which is an excellent wall plant with its tight rosettes of deep green leaves and stiff heads of magenta flowers. One plant of Dianthus caesius gave me innumerable cuttings, and all the rock campanulas were used ad infinitum. Saxifrages were stuffed into crannies, in some places I planted gypsophila to foam over the stones, in another Saponaria ocymoides. The trailing Geranium Traversii , Pritchard’s var., is good on a high wall, as it is generous with its trails, while Geranium sanguineum lancastiense can be used on top of a wall or in a rock crevice.
The rough wall we made round the lawn was another place where I could grow rock plants. Rock roses and androsaces, aethionemas and shrubby thymes thrive in that wall. I grow great mounds of alyssum, more of the lemon coloured variety than the golden, here and there a small lavender or silver plant such as Helichrysum plicatum , and the green leaved Dianthus multiflorus , with its bright cerise flowers, and the salmon pink version, Emil Pare. The perennial cheiranthus and erysimums are
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