AND 



GARDEN GUIDE. 



EOCKWORK. 



F all the mistakes that are made in the embellishment of 

 gardens, the rockery is but too frequently the most ridi- 

 culous. If we stroll through any of the popular places 

 of out-door resort, we are sure to see plenty of rockeries 

 and raised banks; they abound in place and out of 

 place, and when they are appropriately placed it is after all a matter 

 of chance, because, as they are sprinkled about everywhere, some 

 few, like seed scattered by the wind, are sure to fall in suitable 

 situations. The same may in a certain sense be said of the rockeries 

 in private grounds, and it really makes one feel melancholy to 

 reflect upon the waste of money, time, and ingenuity involved in the 

 construction of many of them. 



Take a flower-garden, and in the midst of it make a pyramid of 

 vitrefied bricks and flints, or throw up a hillock of huge stones, and 

 set upon the top of it a small plaster statue, or a cast of Queen 

 Elizabeth, or Shakespeare, or Paganini ; daub the stones over with 

 blue and green paint — in fact, moss them and bronze them, and use 

 plenty of colour. Then stick in anywhere a geranium, a fern or 

 two, put a few shabby lilacs at the back, and make round the whole 

 a gravel-path, edged with white flints or brick-rubbish, to corres- 

 pond with the eminence, and you have one of these "model 

 rockeries" that delight Londoners when they take their walks 

 abroad, and which many of them copy in arranging their own 

 grounds. It is the best fun in the whole world to visit a garden 

 where there is plenty of rock-work ; but you must be reticent as to 

 your opinion of it, or risk all the consequences of giving an unfor- 

 givable offence, if you should speak your mind upon the matter. 



Eock-work of a certain kind is admissible almost anywhere — in 

 a tank of marine fishes, in a tank of river-fishes, in a fern-shade, in 

 the basin of a fountain, at the point where walks meet in flower- 

 gardens, and as objects on which the eye may rest in walks through 

 lawns, shrubberies, and wilderness scenery. But in every case the 



January. * 



