The Garden of British Wild Flowers. 303 



generally made, are delusions — ugly, unnatural, and 

 quite unfit for a plant to grow upon. The stones 

 or "rocks" are piled up, with no sufficient quantity 

 of soil or any preparation made for the plants, so 

 that all really beautiful rock-plants refuse to grow 

 upon them, and they are taken possession of by 

 weeds and rubbish, which also often refuse to 

 grow upon the " rockwork," because they cannot 

 lay hold of it, so to speak. They are generally 

 made either too perpendicular or too ambitiously, 

 even in the best gardens in England — masses of 

 rock being used merely to produce an effect, or 

 masses of stone piled up without any of those 

 crevices or deep chinks of soil into which rock- 

 plants delight to root in a native state. 



The right way is to have more soil than "rock," to 

 let the latter suggest itself rather than expose its un- 

 covered sides, and to make them very much flatter 

 than is the rule, so that the moisture may percolate 

 in every direction, and that the rockwork may 

 more resemble a jutting forth of stony or rocky 

 ground than the ridiculous half-wall-like structures 

 which pass for rockworks in this country. I have 

 grown this Gentiana verna very well in well-drained 

 pots, giving it plenty of water in summer, and also 

 in the open border in fine sandy soil, the surface 



