CASSELL'S 



Popular Gardening. 



ROCK, ALPINE, FERN, AND WILD 

 GAEDENmG. 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF CONSTRUCTION. 

 By D. T. Fish. 



imitate nature so closely as 

 to be mistaken for it, wliile 

 providing all the most foster- 

 ing growing conditions pos- 

 sible to the highest art, may- 

 be described as the perfection 

 of rock building and furnish- 

 ing. In the majority of 

 rockeries there is an excess 

 of stone or other hard mate- 

 rial, and a sad scarcity of 

 suitable soil for the culture 

 of the plants. The rock i^s 

 too often made the main 

 thing, the earth and the 

 plants the secondary. This is a structural error 

 that can hardly be remedied afterwards, and 

 has smitten thousands of artificial rockeries with 

 a barrenness that has robbed them of the major 

 portion of their interest and beauty. An excess of 

 stone, lava, or other hard material is as improvident 

 as it proves unsuccessful. It costs money, as well as 

 invites or insures failure. Not seldom tons upon 

 tons of rock material have been purchased and 

 carted from long distances, and piled up into mounds 

 or raised into spiky pinnacles, at enormous cost, 

 while far more effective and suitable base-lines 

 could have been formed on the spot. Earth of some 

 sort — soil or subsoil, chalk, gravel, or rock — is 

 always present, and this can be thrown into the 

 most erratic forms, and disposed into an irregularity 

 of surface that shall render repetition or monotony 

 impossible. . 



The Base. — The earth is at once the cheapest, 

 most stable, and suitable base for rock-work of aU 

 25 



sorts and for aU purposes — whether for Alpines only 

 mixtures of Alpines, herbaceous plants and shi-ub(S : 

 ferns ; or a mixture of ferns and flowering plants. 

 As a rule, not only is there too much rock used, and 

 visible — alike on artistic and cultural grounds — 

 but the effect is frittered away in a multiplicity of 

 tiny elevations and depressions that degrade the 

 rook- work into the depths of puny insignificance. 

 Too much is attempted in the limited area. A few 

 bold smaller mounds and deeper depressions, a little 

 rolling ground, and a few rugged rough rocks, would 

 give dignity to the smallest rockery, and raise the 

 larger to somewhat of the grandeur and sublimity of 

 nature. But the attempt to crowd the rich variety of a 

 hiU or country-side into a few square yards converts 

 the most imposing attempts at the sublime into the 

 actually ludicrous. One tiny hill or rugged cliff 

 well formed and furnished, gives more satisfaction 

 than a hundred little goes, each as like to the other 

 as two peas, and aU resulting in a rockery that is a 

 mockery of nature and a burlesque on art. 



The Kock. — Instead of piling up stones, brick- 

 bats, clinkers, or lava in cart or barrow-loads, as the 

 base of rockeries, no hard materials should come on 

 to the ground till the general outline of the rockery 

 is already well and truly laid. Of course, where 

 very large stones are used, some of them may be 

 placed during the process of laying the earthy bases of 

 the rockery. But these and the whole of the so-called 

 rocks should be so placed as to crop out of, rather 

 than form the substance or base of the rock-work. 

 It is astonishing how far the rocky matters will go 

 when thus treated and managed. Each piece care, 

 fully posted may go farther than several cart-loads 

 on the higgledy-pig^edy, hap-hazard style. 



But it is not all who begin thus with the earth that 

 manage to finish an artistic rock-work. On the con- 

 trary, some of the worst samples seen by the writer 

 have been so formed that the earth and every step of 

 the process can be traced for aU future time. A regu- 

 lar or irregular earth-bank or series of tiny mounds 



