ROCKERY TO SCREEN AN ABJUTT BANK. 



Another. very pretty ornament for the garden is the Rockery, made of rough stones, taste- 

 fully laid up, with earth sufficient for the growth of plants suitable for this work. Low growing 

 plants with succulent and ornamental foliage are appropriate to the rockery Portulaca is 

 admirable. I would like my readers who have had no experience in this kind of garden 

 ornamentation to try a specimen in some retired quarter of the garden, so that if it proves a 



failure no harm will be done. There is nothing 

 more interesting than a good rockery, and 

 nothing more unsightly than a poor one. To 

 be good it must be somewhat natural in appear- 

 ance and have an appropriate position, and be 

 furnished with suitable and healthy plants. A 

 pile of stones thrown together in the center of 

 of a lawn looks bad enough, and it would be 

 hardly possible to remedy the evil of location 

 by any skill in planting ; but a little rockery in 

 some retired corner gives variety and beauty to 

 the garden scene. 



Few things pleased us more when in Europe 



j58MtJL Pif IpF than the skill exhibited in giving an air of 



2aMBMME - rural taste to small city lots, many of them so 



very small that few Americans would be 

 willing to attempt ornamental gardening on so 



C-B-^jg^g -1 diminutive a scale. And yet, if we can make 



^2ZwHf OKKfc^SltiAkSr^l, |bi la parlor or sitting-room beautiful in winter 



with a few plants, why can we not make a 

 small paradise of a little twenty-foot-square 

 " front yard?" Many of the yards we refer to 

 were not more than twenty feet in width, and 

 yet remarkable as specimens of taste. Some 

 of these little gardens were attached to houses 

 in rows ; others belonged to what are known 

 as semi-detached cottages that is, two only 

 joined together. 



We give a specimen of one of these little 

 front gardens, or, as they are sometimes called, 

 BALCONY GARDEN. entrance courts. The lots are sometimes so 



narrow that the raised bed is made several feet from the center to allow of free passage on one 

 side. The English people seem to love seclusion, and so the front yard is usually bounded by a 

 wall on every side, as we have, in a measure, shown in the engraving, and would be fearfully 

 unsightly but for the fact that these walls are ornamented, and sometimes concealed with climbers 

 and other beautiful plants. The ornamental border that surrounds the central bed is usually 



19 



