“To have a good garden of this sort, one must have earth as well as rocks.  Earth must be put into all the crevices of rock, so that there is some depth to it, and at such an angle that it won’t be washed out by hard rains.  A rock garden should have an earth foundation.  I mean that there must be much of earth about it.  I saw a charming one, which had only climbing nasturtiums planted over it.  It was a great rock jutting out, and extending back into the yard—­a big, flat, irregular affair—­and all over it were these running vines.  It was very simple and very effective.  Go to the woods and seek out ferns which are growing in rocky places.  Take what little earth they have about them, and try to give them a similar position in your own rockery.  Bring back some leaf mould from the woods, and mix the garden soil for the rockery.  Candytuft, dwarf phlox, stonecrop, morning glory, saxifrage, bleeding heart, rock cress, myrtle, thrift, columbine, bell flower, and moss pink.  Get some moss, too, for chinks between rocks.

“If we could go back to old colonial days, and visit a dame’s garden, I am sure we should find a little herb garden there.  Our mothers might call these herbs pot herbs.  Here all the flavourings for the soups were raised.  Here sweet lavender might be found, its flowers used to make fragrant the bed linen.  Horehound, anise and others were used in medicines; while little caraway seeds made delicious the cakes and cookies.  I can see bunches of dried sage hung in the attic.

“Even with us there might be good use made of this garden both at home and at school.  We do, of course, grow parsley, which is an herb, but the others seem to have dropped out of our gardens.  We might at least grow next summer the sage and savoury for the turkey stuffing.

“Herbs need a sandy, well-worked soil.  Seed should be sown in drills about twelve inches apart.  The seed should be sown in early spring, as soon as the ground is warm.  Sprinkle the seed just below the surface, and cover lightly with soil.

“A list of common herbs includes the following:  Anise, balm, basil, borage, caraway, catnip, coriander, dill, fennel, horehound, hop, hyssop, lavender, pot marigold, sweet and pot marjoram, parsley, pennyroyal, rosemary, rue, sage, savoury, tansy, sorrel, thyme, and wormwood.  It would be of little use to plant all of these, even to see what the plants were like.  I would suggest your trying lavender, sage, savoury, and dill.

“Lavender seed is very slow to germinate, so sow the seed plentifully in early spring.  The soil should have a dusting of lime over it as lavender plants enjoy lime.  The flower is the part you wish.  Pick these flower stalks before the flowers get old.  Dry, and then sprinkle the dried flowers in the linen chest.  Lavender is very sweet, and is often spoken of as sweet lavender.  To this day one will hear women singing in the streets of London, ‘Sweet lavender, buy my sweet lavender.’