344 THE GARDENER. [Aug. 



be so constructed that it shall be suitable for the growth of the plants 

 desired to be cultivated. A rockery may be a first-rate imitation of a 

 real rock or cliff, showing the dips, stratification, and other features, 

 and yet offering but small facility for the introduction of plants, thus 

 favouring one of the objects at the expense of the other — just as mag- 

 nificent conservatories are sometimes built in which plants can only 

 languish. 



In order that a rockery may not be an offensive or incongruous ob- 

 ject, the site must be well chosen. Pyramids of stones on a flat surface, 

 an amphitheatre, symmetrically arranged, fronting a shrubbery or in 

 the corner of a terrace, or in any geometrical position adjoining build- 

 ings, are instances of positions where rockwork would be out of place. 

 But given an abruptly sloping natural declivity — if adjoining water all 

 the better ; and if the aspect can be varied by bending round an angle, 

 better still — there a rockery may be made. The site may even be artifi- 

 cially improved in deepening the slope, by adding to its height with soil 

 or planting. We do not think that it is at all necessary that a rockery 

 should be an exact copy of nature in any of its forms — either of strati- 

 fied rocks or the many forms in which the detritus of rock is found. 

 A tasteful piece of rockwork may be made without any very close imi- 

 tation of nature, — just as a landscape can be thrown on canvass by the 

 painter which at once pleases the eye of taste, artificial though it be, 

 by the truthful look there is about it. A certain amount of Nature's 

 guidance must be admitted, as a matter of course ; for instance, irregu- 

 larity and variety, as if by chance, an orderly disorder — like Hamlet's 

 madness, " there must be method in't." The materials must be 

 natural fragments of rock — not water-worn stones, or stones with every 

 indication of the quarry about them : unstratified rock we like the best. 

 These can be so arranged that an endless variety of little terraces 

 and recesses, and pockets and ridges, from base to summit of the posi- 

 tion, can be made to suit any variety of plants, from the shallow-rooting 

 Saxifrages to the deep-rooting Gunnera. Overhanging ledges can be 

 made, with recesses for shade-loving plants. In short, in the construc- 

 tion, our second object proposed — that of preparing suitable positions 

 for the plants desired to be cultivated — must ever be kept in mind. 

 The most of our European alpine plants require a permanently moist 

 soil, as every one knows who has trudged the mountain slopes in search 

 of plants ; although many do prefer a scanty soil on cool rocks, — which 

 means that no position exists which may not be selected by some plant 

 where to live and thrive, as witness the stone-and-lime wall seen from 

 our window, covered with Aspleniums, and Scolopendriums, and Cete- 

 rach, and Drabas, and Linarias, and many more things equally green, if 

 with names more homely. Some require the cool moisture of running 

 water always among their roots, as the Parnassia, Narthecium, or Pin- 

 guicula ; and if a trickle can be conveyed over some part of the rock- 

 work, it will be the one source of success in many instances. Some 



