142 THE TLOEAL WOELD AND aARDEN GUIDE. 



gardener. Some of the makers turn out very respectable-looking 

 aiFairs made of bricks, etc., ingeniously covered with cement, but 

 even the best of these, indoors or out, are failures as regards plant- 

 growing, and there is more than one admired fernery-rockwork, 

 which, if not embellished from a large stock at hand, would soon 

 look a very poor affair indeed. I have seen a " rockwork " made 

 against the back wall of a greenhouse, and by a professed hand, 

 which was so perpendicular, and in which the " pockets " were so 

 arranged that pegging on moss and sticking on ferns from month to 

 month was a constant labour for the hapless gardener. That cost 

 — I am afraid to say what it did cost, but it was a good deal more 

 than Mr. Bewley's famous fernery at Dublin, and yet what a differ- 

 ence in the result! The best judges go hundreds of miles to see 

 the fernery at Rockville, and pronounce it far before anything of the 

 kind in existence ; whereas in the other case a mass of stuff cocked up 

 into little hillocks, and pock-marked over with holes, remains against 

 the back wall of a low greenhouse, till the proprietor gets sick of its 

 ceaseless expense without any beautiful result, and has it harrowed 

 out or otherwise destroyed. By the way, the term " pocket," as 

 usuall7 applied to rockwork, is worthy of the ordinary type. Such 

 a word should never be heard in connection with a good rockwork, 

 and the hole it describes is rarely capable of growing even a common 

 plant decently. The whole back, body, and bottom of every rock- 

 work indoors or out, should be a mass of the soil that is most con- 

 genial to the plants it is intended to accommodate, and that is the 

 only thing even remotely analogous to a " pocket" that is required. 

 In such even a few spores or seeds shaken on will soon produce a 

 genuine rockwork vegetation. Once a fibre reaches the motherly body 

 of stuff in the interior little more danger to the plant it nourishes ; 

 it will sink and ramify, the plant will be happy under the brightest 

 sun or driest winds ; whereas in ordinary cases, as these unbearable 

 " pockets " get dried out by a few days' sun or scorching winds, and 

 then comes death or continual pumping and watering. 



To make rockwork on the colossal and ambitious scale in which 

 it is seen in some of the places I have mentioned, is of course out 

 of the question to most readers, and indeed the simpler and less 

 pretentious things of this kind are made the better, even where 

 means are abundant. There are thousands and thousands of 

 houses around London, and all other great towns, from the windows 

 of which a well-covered bit of rockwork would look charming and 

 refreshing, but in such little gardens the surroundings and many 

 other considerations forbid any "tall" attempt in this way. As a 

 rule, all straight-sided half-wall-like attempts should be avoided as 

 bad, even where it may be done by the most tasteful hands. Never 

 make them in the shade unless for ferns ; the full sun and free air 

 with plenty of moisture at the root is their delight. Lay it down 

 in your mind that a rockwork suitable to a small or suburban 

 garden should be well clothed with plants — the " rocks " indicating 

 their presence by jutting forth here and there through the grateful 

 green of the mossy saxifrages — and j ust showing a point where they 

 are nearly smothered by some alpine that likes to rest its tiny 



