The Canadian Horticulturist. 357 



ROCKERIES. 



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|F a neighbor should dump, without orders, a pile of stones and dirt 

 on the grass in your front lawn, you would be offended; if he should 



„ arrange these rocks in a circular well-like mound with the 

 ^^XjT, dirt in the centre, you would wonder at his stupidity in thus 

 < x\¥-^r wasting his time. Under such circumstances, you would 

 probably consider the affair a blemish, and order its removal 

 at once. Are the rockeries we ordinarily see any more useful 

 or ornamental than what has just been described ? They 

 may be small and of common stones, or they may be large 

 with many curious stones, and they may have some plants, but, if so, they are 

 such wretched dried-up, burned-out, starved specimens that one only approaches 

 them as they would a half-famished and ragged child of the city — out of pity 

 and curiosity, not to admire. The same plants may be thriving in other parts 

 of the grounds, and with the exception of the rockery the whole place may be 

 in an attractive and thriving condition. You may say that these are misplaced 

 and poorly constructed examples, and this may be true ; but it is also true that 

 the best constructed and most carefully cared-for rockeries, in all kinds of soil, 

 do not begin to be as attractive as those that are seen, and that we read about, 

 in European gardens. You will surmise that there is something in our climate 

 responsible for this. If you compare the meagre flora, of a distinctly Alpine 

 character, of the White Mountains of New Hampshire, with the extremely rich 

 and varied flora of the Swiss Alps, you will have striking evidence of this. 



In England, owing to the great amount of moisture, delicate rock plants can 

 not be grown successfully in the open border, so the rockery is provided to give 

 suitable conditions as regards drainage, exposure, etc. A large number of these 

 same plants can be grown, with little trouble, in a well-drained open border here, 

 and the only advantage that rocks can give is to raise them a little above the 

 surface to make the drainage more perfect. In a rockery they would be burned 

 and dried out in summer, or thrown, or frozen, out in winter. 



It is hardly advisable to construct a rockery in any case merely for the sake 

 of having one ; the only reason for it would be that there was a spot on the 

 grounds on which the conditions were favorable, that could not be used to 

 advantage for anything else — like a steep, moist, rocky slope, a broken ledge, or 

 a worked-out bit of quarry, or a cool, shady glen in the woods. 



A rockery never should be placed in the centre of the lawn, and seldom 

 where it is fully exposed to view across the lawn from important windows of the 

 house. In the construction of a rockery, the most favorable conditions should 

 be provided for the growth of the plants to be used in it. Good deep pockets 

 of soil should be made, and advantage should be taken of any naturally moist 



