MONTHLY CALENDAR. 361 



very many plants will be found to flourish and do well upon rock-work which 

 can hardly be kept alive elsewhere. Sometimes, when the garden or pleasure- 

 ground is very extensive, a piece of rock-wox'k may appear to be needed on its 

 own account, to form a break in the scene ; in which case it will be desirable 

 that the work be constructed of the stone of the country, to give to it as natural 

 an appearance as possible ; but, in a general way, for rock-work which is 

 intended to be covered with plants, any material that comes most readily to 

 hand may be made use of. The flint stones fz"om the chalk and marl pits, 

 where they can be had, form excellent rock-work ; and so, of course, do the 

 different spars of Devonshire and Derbyshire also. As a general rule, rock- 

 work should never be raised on grass, but on gravel, or on a concrete founda- 

 tion. It is also well placed around a pond or water- tank. In the centre of 

 a square gravelled plot, a tall piece of rock-work is a very pleasing object. 



1034. It may be constructed by using the roots of old trees piled one upon 

 another as a basis, which should be well covered with a good coating of fine loam. 

 On this the stones may be built up, in any form that good taste may suggest, 

 interstices, with more or less of surface, being left, which will in this way 

 form beds for the different plants. The spring of the year is the best season 

 for making rock-work, since the soil will have time to settle, and the stones to 

 become fixed in their position before the next winter's frost. Almost every 

 county in England has some material natural to it from which rock-work can 

 be formed, — even the larger stones of the gravel-pits may be used for this 

 purpose ; and, in the absence of anything else, blistered clay from the brick- 

 yards and clinkers from the smith's furnaces are not to be rejected. The sea- 

 shore, also, all along the coast afi'ords plenty of material out of which a little 

 taste and good judgment will soon arrange something both agreeable to the 

 eye and useful as a bed for many different classes of plants. On the tall piece 

 of rock-work which has just been described, may be planted almost every 

 variety of hardy or half-hardy creepers, — lophospermums, Maurandya cana- 

 riensis, the different sorts of periwinkle, &c. &c. ; while lower down, between 

 the stones, cistuses, saxifrages, and sedums may be grown. The wild sedums 

 of our different counties form most interesting collections when placed by 

 themselves in a separate piece of rock-work ; and so also do the wild ferns. 

 The writer of these remarks has formed on a piece of rock-work under a north 

 wall in his garden, what is to himself a most interesting collection of seventeen 

 or eighteen different varieties of ferns, gathered with his own hands in different 

 places in the county of Norfolk. Many other counties in England are much 

 richer in these natural beauties, which, when arranged in rock-work as county 

 collections, will well repay any one for the time and trouble spent in searching 

 for them. 



1035. Pegs for Bedding-2)lants. — Various expedients ai-e resorted to by gar- 

 deners to peg down the different sorts of bedding-plants, — verbenas, petunias, 

 &c. &c. Some use ladies' hair-pins, and some use small pegs made of hazel or 

 other wood ; but the neatest, the cheapest, and most efficient pegs which have 

 come under the writer's notice, are cut from the brake, a wild fern which grows 



