Dry Stone Walls for Rock Plants.

Otago Witness, Issue 2260, 24 June 1897, Page 8

Dry Stone Walls for Rock Plants.

In garden formation, especially in sloping or diveriified ground, what is called a dry wall is often useful^ and may answer the purpose of supporting a bank or dividing off a garden quite as well as an expensive brick or masonry wall. Where the stones can be got easily, men used to the work will often make gently " battered " walls, which, while fulfilling their object in supporting banks, will make homes for many plants which would not live one winter on a level surface in the Eame place. We are now building one such wall with large blocks of sandstone laid on their natural "bed," the front of the stones almost as rough as they come out, and chopped nearly level between, so that they lie firm and well. No mortar is used, and as each stone is l*id slender-rooted alpine and rock plants are placed aloDg in lines between, with a sprinkling of sand or fine earth enough to slightly cover the roots and aid them in getting through the stones to the back, where, as the wall is raised, we pack the space behind it with gritty earth. This the plants soon find out and root firmly in. Even on old walls made with mortar rock plants and small native ferns very often establish themselves, but these dry walls are more congenial to rock plants, and one may have any number of beautiful alpine plants in perfect health in them. One charm of this kind of wall garden is that

no attention is required afterwards. Even on the best rock gardens things get overrun by other?, and weeds come in ; but in a wellplanted dry wall we may leave plants for years untouched beyond pulling out any interloping plant or weed that may happen to get in. Ho little soil, however, is put with the plant* that there is little chance of weeds. If the stones were stuffed with much earlh weeds would get in, and ib is best to have the merest dusting of soil with the roots, so a3 not to separate tho stones, but let each one rest firmly on the one beneath it. Among the things which do well in this way almost the whole of the beautiful rock and alpiDe flowers may be trusted, such things the arabis, aubrietia, and iberis being among the easiest to grow ; but as snch things can be grown without walls it is hardly worth while to put them there, pretby as some of the newer forms of the aubrietia are. Between these stones is the very place for mountain pinks, wh ; ch thrive better there than on level ground ; the dwarf alpine hair/bells also are charming in such chinks, while i-he aipiae wallflowers and creeping rock plants, like the toad flax (L : n<iria) ( and the Spanish eiiuus, arc quite at home there. The gentianella does very well on the cool sides of such walls, and we get a different result according to the aspect. All our little pretty wall fern«, now becoming so rare where hawkers abound, do perfectly on 'such rough wails, and the alpine phloxe3 may be used, though they are not so much in need of the comfort oJ a wall as the European a'pire plants, the Rocky Mountain dwarf phloxes being very hardy and euduriag in our gardens on level ground. The advantage of the wall is that we can grow things that would perish in level ground, owing to excitement of growth in winter or other csu'ea. The rockfoils are chaiming on a wall, particularly the silvery and mossy kinds, and the little Btoue-cuveriug eandwort(A. balearick) will run everywhere over such a wall. Stonecrops aud house leeks would do ioo. bub are easily grown inauy.opeu spot of ground. In many cases the rare and somewhat delicate alpines, if care be taken, would do far better on such a wall than as they are usually cultivated. Plauts like the thymes are quite freo in such conditions, though it may be too freq for the rare kinds ; also the alpiue violas and any euch pretty creeper as the blue bindweed of North Africa, and the rainondia of the Pyrenees. — Field. '