In My Vicarage Garden 



lently well, and as they have been allowed to go 

 their own way they have covered up the hard 

 angles and hidden the ugly stones, and so it has 

 been an undoubted success, and excellently suited 

 to a botanic garden, but to no other. I should 

 be sorry to see it much imitated ; the principle of 

 pockets with deeply sunk stones behind which the 

 plants can find shelter from sun and wind can be 

 easily adopted without converting the garden into 

 a gigantic chess-board. 



What, then, will make a rockwork which will 

 form a happy home for plants, and be at the same 

 time beautiful in itself and a beautiful adjunct to 

 a garden ? I have already said that a rockwork 

 which rises above the level of a flat surface at 

 once proclaims itself to be artificial ; on a sloping 

 ground, especially if very steep, rocks may natur- 

 ally crop out, and will be useful to keep up the 

 soil, and they are very natural borders to a path 

 at the bottom of sloping ground ; and a very 

 little management will give plenty of good places 

 for plants near such rocks. In many gardens 

 there is an old quarry from which the stones were 

 taken for the building of the house ; and these 

 always make excellent rock gardens, being below 

 the surrounding garden, with different levels, and 

 generally with a good floor, more or less flat, and 

 sometimes sufficiently moist to form a bog garden. 

 I think it best that a rock garden should not be 

 seen till you are immediately above it or in it ; 

 one that obtrudes itself from a distance is in every 



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