Part I. THE ROCK-GARDEN. 5 



I will next speak of the various ways in which alpine plants 

 may be grown successfully, 



In numbers of gardens an attempt at " rockwork " of some sort 

 has been made ; but in nine cases out of ten, the result is simply 

 ridiculous ; not because it is puny when compared with Nature's 

 work in this way, but because it is generally so arranged that 

 rock plants cannot exist upon it. The idea of rockwork arose 

 at first from a desire to imitate those natural croppings out of 

 rocks which in temperate and cold countries are frequently 

 covered with a dwarf but beautiful vegetation. It is strange that 

 the conditions which surround these, and their texture and posi- 

 tion, should rarely be taken into account by those who make 

 rockwork in gardens. Numei'ous places occur' in every county 

 in which a sort of sloping stone or burr wall passes as " rock- 

 work," a dust of soil being shaken in between the stones, and 

 the whole so arranged that, if you do cover it with suitable plants, 

 they perish speedily. In others, made upon a better plan as 

 regards the base, the " rocks " are all stuck up on their ends, 

 and so close that soil, or room fo^'a plant to root in them, is out 

 of the question. The best thing that usually happens to a 

 structure of this sort is that its nakedness gets covered by a 

 Cotoneaster, or some friendly climbing shrub, or some rampant 

 weed, of course to the exclusion of true rock-plants ; but in most 

 cases it is a standing eyesore. 



In moist and elevated districts, where frequent rains and 

 showers keep porous stone in a continually humid state, this 

 straight-sided, stone-wall-like rockwork may manage to support 

 a few plants ; but in by far the larger portion of the British isles 

 it is quite useless, and always ugly and out of taste. And yet it 

 must not be concluded from this that erect faces of properly 

 formed rock may not be covered with a beautiful vegetation, 

 for Fig. 3 shows a portion of a vertical mass of rocks clothed 

 with alpine plants. But the vegetation must be suited to the 

 position. It is not alone because the mountain air is pure and 

 clear and moist that the Gentians and like plants prefer it, but 

 because the elevation is unsuitable to the coarser, growing vege- 

 tation, and our alpines have it all to themselves. Take a healthy 

 patch of Silene acaulis, by which the summits of some of our 

 highest mountains are sheeted, over with rosy crimson of various 

 shades, and plant it two thousand feet lower down in suitable 

 soil, keeping it moist enough and free from weeds, and you 



