1870.] CONSTRUCTION OF ROCK-GARDENS. 321 



may be perfectly firm. Have nothing to do with tree roots or stumps 

 in work of this kind ; they crumble away, and are at best a nuisance 

 and disfigurement to a garden. The intervening spaces may then be 

 filled up, half with the compost and half with the stony matter, and 

 the smaller blocks placed in position, the whole being made as taste- 

 fully diversified as may seem desirable, taking the size of the structure 

 into consideration. When finished, it should look like a bit of rocky 

 ground, stones of different shapes protruding — here a straight-sided one, 

 under the lee of which a shade-loving plant may flourish; there two in 

 juxtaposition, between which a cliff alpine may find a place. Two or 

 three feet high will, as a rule, be high enough for the highest points of 

 rocky fringes of this sort, though the plan admits of considerable 

 variation, and it may be tastefully made twice or thrice as high. In 

 some of our public and private gardens, want of means is given as 

 an excuse for the presence of the hideous pock-marked potato-pit-like 

 masses of rockwork that disfigure them. The plan now recommended 

 is as much less expensive than these as it is less offensive ! " 



" While many have old ruins and walls on which to grow Alpine 

 plants, others will have no means of enjoying them this way, but all 

 may succeed perfectly with the plan suggested in the accompanying 

 figure. By building a rough stone wall, and packing the intervals as 



Jll,;,,,, 



firmly as possible with loam and sandy peat, and putting, perhaps, a 

 little mortar on the outside of the largest interstices, a host of brilliant 

 gems may be grown with almost as little attention as we bestow on 

 the common Ivy. Thoroughly consolidated, the materials of the wall 

 would afford precisely the kind of nutriment required by the plants. 

 The wall would prove a more congenial home to many species than 

 any but the best-constructed rock-garden. In many parts of the coun- 

 try the rains would keep the walls in a sufficiently moist condition, the 

 top being always left somewhat concave ; in dry districts, a perforated 

 copper pipe laid along the top will diffuse the requisite moisture. In 

 very moist places, natives of wet rocks and trailing plants, like the 

 Linnaea, might be interspersed here and there among the other Alpines ; 

 in dry ones it would be desirable to plant chiefly the Saxifrages, Sedums, 



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