There is a pretty story of the way the Lily of the Valley came to run wild, as it does in German woods. Once upon a time, so long ago that no one in Germany had any Lilies of the Valley, there lived an Abbot who was a great gardener and a holy man. A pilgrim passing through his district was kindly received by him, and in gratitude gave him a withered-looking root that he said he had brought from a country where similar roots bore lovely scented flowers. The Abbot planted it and watched it, as he watched everything in his garden. In the spring the root sent up a few broad, shining leaves, but no flowers. He left it alone, and next year there were more leaves and two or three Lilies of the Valley, the first that had ever grown in Germany. By the third year the fame of the plant had travelled here and there, so that people who loved their gardens came to the Abbey on purpose to see it. Every year there was a bigger bed of the Lilies and a longer procession of visitors to see them, and the heart of the Abbot was filled with pride and vainglory, because he, and no other man, possessed the flowers. But he was a holy Abbot; he became afraid of the pride growing within him, and saw it to be evil. So one day he dug up every Lily of the Valley growing in his garden and carried them into the woods, and planted them here and there, that they might belong to all men, and not to him alone; and ever since the woods of Germany have been full of Lilies of the Valley. CHAPTER X ROCK AND WALL GARDENS THE very worst advice we ever saw given about gardening was given in a popular magazine in an article on Rock Gardens. It said that all you wanted for a rockery in a town or suburban garden was a cartload of stones or _bricks_ dumped down in a corner. We really wondered when we read it whether the writer thought that plants could feed on bricks. Soon after reading this nightmare of an article we came across Mrs. Swanwick’s clever book, ‘The Small Town Garden,’ and we will tell you what she says about the proper way to start a rockery. ‘If people who make a rockery would consider that it is to be made of earth, supported with stones or rocks, they would be much nearer the right method than those who think of a rockery as a pile of stones with a little soil dribbled in among them. If we bear these requirements in mind, it becomes clear that the stones or rocks must be set so as to leave no hollows empty of soil between them, nor niches kept dry by overhanging rocks, and the slope of the earth must be such that the rain will not wash it away, and expose the roots of the plants.’