PLANNING AND BUILDING 27 



Each piece was very firmly placed and carefully 

 wedged, so as to make it immovable, the soil being well 

 rammed in behind it to knit it all together. This I 

 continued all round the sides of the pool till I reached 

 nearly to the permanent water level, which I had 

 previously ascertained. 



At two parts I then ceased building, as there I had pro- 

 posed to make a bog bed, where water loving Primulas, 

 Iris and Saxifraga peltata could be planted with their 

 toes in the water but their crowns above. The retaining 

 wall about these places I completed to six inches above 

 the water level, with stone lumps set in cement, and 

 instead of filling in with ordinary soil, I put in broken 

 peat blocks and peat moss, to the depth of eighteen 

 inches, topped with finer peat, sand and leaf-mould, in 

 about equal proportions. 



As soon as the other parts of the pool side, except 

 the steep cliff, had reached just above the water level, 

 I altered the angle of building, which hitherto had been 

 one of about sixty degrees, to one more approaching 

 thirty-five degrees, but varied in such a way as to 

 form buttress-like shoulders, with valleys between, 

 so giving an irregular and natural appearance to it. 



Above one of the bog beds, before mentioned, I 

 constructed four others, each one higher than the pre- 

 ceding, in the form of terraces, and in these cases, 

 since they were to form well-drained bogs, that is, 



