Opaque walls have given way to transparency in most of today’s houses. Outdoors, banks, if any, have given way to walls of brick or stone or ledges, broken by flights of flagstone steps. Courtyards and terraces cut into lawn areas.
These changes, the marriage of indoors and outdoors, demand a new look for your garden and cry out for intimate plantings. How? With what plants?
With trees and shrubs, of course. But also with the small plants of the world, from mountain and meadow, streamside and wood. These, usually relegated to the natural or rock garden tucked away in a secluded corner, are the ones for positions close to the house.
Why hide these delights in out-of-the-way places? Why not enjoy them nearby? They have everything. Good foliage, predominantly evergreen or evergreen. Brilliant flower colors, ravishing flower, and plant forms, and often fragrance to boot.
Appreciate Them Close At Hand
To appreciate them, you must view them close at hand. That is the point. These little beauties are just the thing for the places close to the house: for around the terrace, for walls, as edgings of steps and paths, between stepping stones, at the entrance, and as groundcovers in the sun or shade.
You will rejoice in their exquisite flowers in spring, summer, or fall. Of course, you can make many of them bloom again by shearing them back after they flower. But since most have foliage as lovely as flowers, you will enjoy them whether they flower or not.
Associating With Stones
While some thrive without a stone in sight, others benefit by associating with stones on a terrace, wall, path, or step. They love to get their roots in the cool dampness of earth locked between stones. Nowhere are many of them happier than on a wall.
Many appreciate a topdressing of gravel or stone chips. All want good drainage but none demand more than minimum care. They are hardy, so cold weather does not bother them a bit.
Snow Covers
If snow covers your section of the country in winter, that is all the cover they need. But, if not, if your ground freezes and thaws, all you have to do is give your miniatures a neat topdressing of gravel. And, in spring, no matter where you live, a top dressing of the gritty soil they like.
Four Groups Of Sun Lovers
There are many of the so-called rock garden plants. Some I have described in past issues of POPULAR GARDENING. Some of these I will describe in future issues.
Now I want to tell you of a few useful sun lovers, dividing them roughly into four groups:
- Groundcover and paving plants
- Choose plants for safe-from-feet places
- Strong and sturdy for wherever you have room
- Little treasures for special spots
Group One: Dwarf Achilleas
Dwarf achilleas loom prominently in the first group. Their flat, slowly spreading wooly or lacy foliage is fine for joints of steps, between paving and flagstones, or just as a ground cover.
They can stand some walking on. Their flowers are white, pale, and deep yellow.
Others in the first group are:
- Antennaria dioica rosea, an everlasting, which makes a very flat gray mat and 2-inch pink flowers
- Dianthus deltoides, for sun and shade, which makes a green mat, holds its little pinks 6” inches high.
- Phlox subulata, indispensable for its good foliage in summer and winter—the more compact varieties with clear colors being the more satisfactory.
Then, still in this same group, there are the potentillas—nevadensis (gray foliage, soft yellow blooms) and Verna (light, bright green foliage, golden orbs); Thymus serpyllum, preferably the vivid coccineum with its very small, very flat leafage, or the even daintier white form.
These can be walked on. Yet another is Veronica pectinate, a fast-spreading gray-green with brilliant blue flowers.
Group Two: Aethionemas
Group two (choice and not to be walked on) includes:
- Aethionemas, (the Persian candytuft) are precious blue-leaved shrublets with long-lasting pink flowers.
- The small pinks which make gray or green buns, mats, or mounds
- The shrubby white candytuft for sun or shade; and its smaller varieties
- Dwarf lavender for a warm spot
- Alpine forget-me-not, which self-sows
- Germander, which can be trimmed to form a neat edging or left informal
- Tunica with its long blooming pink or white baby breath flowers and its showier double variety.
Group Three
In group three (strong and sturdy), for wall, as a spreading mat for a corner where there is room, are:
- Cerastium
- Arabis
- Alyssum
- Aubrieta
- Campanulas like carpatica and the all-season rotundifolia
- Poscharskyana
- Dwarf coreopsis; the larger pinks;
- Dracocephalum grandiflorum; the purple dragons head that blooms and blooms;
- Matty Geranium sanguineum hybrids
- Shrubby sun-roses (helianthemums) with their gay flowers
- Dwarf Iris pumila and taller iris such as foresti against a wall
- Blue flax
- Coral penstemon Flathead Lake and others
- Saponaria which makes big pink mats
- Long-blooming dwarf scabiosa
- Silene schafta for late pink
Fourth Group
The fourth group contains, among its little treasures, the alpines, which are too precious for anything but choice positions—on a wall or in a sheltered nook or corner where they won’t be overrun by a stronger neighbor.
For these places, consider the following:
- Exquisite alpine androsaces
- dainty columbines like Aquilegia Scopulorum
- Viridiflora
- Tiny Armeria caespitosa
- Rarer Campanula allionii
- Elatines
- Little pinks like Neglectus
- La Sour-brine
- Drabas which are miniature rosettes with short-stemmed yellow or white flowers
- Dwarf erigerons
- Townsendias with their white, pink, or lavender daisies
- Precious geraniums like farreri and cinereum subcaulescens
- Yellow-flowered Iris Flavissima
- Dainty Linaria Alpina with orange-lipped purple flowers
- Some of the smaller sempervivums, like the Cobwebs
- The rarer sedums like Dasyphyllum
- Early bluebird Veronica Armeria
The list is infinite—the uses are infinite. But one or two will lead you to more (they are irresistible), and as you get to know a few, all kinds of charming ways to use them will suggest themselves to you.
44659 by Doretta Klaber