206 PKACTICAL GARDENING. 



this altogether, and beginning at the very top, by means of a 

 ladder, paint every ledge, and fill every little crevice with 

 tills mixture ; as you come down, paint the top of every ledge 

 and roughness where a plant could lodge if it grew, do not 

 leave a single lodgement \vithout its share of pudding. Some 

 of your work will go for nothing, because the sun and wind 

 may burn up or dry anything that germinates, but your 

 labour will not be without its fruit. As you come to pockets, 

 as the holes left for plants are called, fill them with soil, 

 which must be handed up to you, and put in your fern ; 

 when you procure them you will learn what situations they 

 want, to what size they grow, and other particulars. As you 

 come near the bottom, some pockets are left larger for more 

 conspicuous plants, and near the ground you will have room 

 to put Httle blooming plants in front of the ferns, such as 

 lobelias, calceolarias, scarlet geraniums, verbenas, anything 

 dwarf, for it matters little how it is finished off. For the 

 summer months you may find several very important subj-ects, 

 that are conspicuous to put in the neighbourhood of the rock- 

 work or ruins, such as brugmansia, which may be put out in 

 May, fuchsias, which may be in conspicuous situations, and put 

 out already in bloom ; some of the saxifrages may be put on 

 broad ledges, and against upright walls, pillars, or columns ; 

 ivy must be proved to clhnb and cover. In a few months 

 you "svill see the effect of your pudding; some one or other of 

 the seeds will germinate in every place where the wet can 

 lodge, and where nothing else will grow, you will find moss. 

 The soil in all the pockets of rock-work and ruins should bB 

 rich in vegetable mould, because everything will grow in it ; 

 in fact, all the soil you find on places where it has not been 

 put, is vegetable, mosses begin and decay, grow up again and 

 decay, larger things spring up, and in turn decay, until it will 

 carry ferns ; therefore the mould used for the pockets should 

 be half loam and haK leaf-mould. 



Water, and its appropriation or adoption. — If the 

 ugliest and poorest stream of water runs through grounds 

 that are to be laid out or improved, it is certainly convertible 

 to ornamental purposes. It is not necessary that water should 

 be deep because it is wide, or that the supply should be bad 

 because the stream is narrow ; but the plan of boring for 

 water is now reduced to such a system, that it is only a 

 question of expense, and where a supply of water is short ox 



