Part I. THE ROCK-GARDEN. 15 



that I believe the arrangement of the rock as regards aspect 

 is not of great moment if the plants have a moist and solid 

 root-medium and if abundance of water be supplied in hot 

 weather. All sides may be suitably embeUished, with alpine 

 plants, but in this country it is desirable to have a greater extent 

 of the rock-garden with warm and sheltered aspects. And the 

 wetter and colder any given district is, the greater is the neces- 

 sity for having a sufficient surface fully exposed to the sun. 



In the construction and planting of every type of rockwork it 

 should be distinctly remembered that every surface may and 

 should be embellished with beautiful plants. Not alone on rocks 

 or slopes, or favourable ledges, or chinks, or miniature valleys, 

 should we see this exquisite plant-life ; numbers of rare moun- 



Fig, 16. — Section, 



tain species will thrive on the less trodden parts of the footways, 

 others, like the two-flowered Violet, seem to thrive best of all 

 in the fissures between the rude steps of the rockwork, other 

 dwarf succulents delight in gravel and the hardest soil, others will 

 run wild in any wood or among low shrubs near the rock-garden. 



Fig. 17 is from a photograph of the lower part of rude steps 

 ascending abruptly from a deep and moist recess in a rock- 

 garden. It shows very imperfectly — no engraving could show 

 it otherwise — the crowds of lovely plants that gather over it, 

 except where worn bare by feet, thriving year by year as freely as 

 they do on the most favoured spots in the Alps, yet without any 

 attention whatever except preventing some coarse lowland weed 

 from forcing its baneful society upon them. 



It can scarcely be necessary to add that we cannot too care- 

 fully avoid any cemented work which would in the least degree 

 interfere with this happy tendency. In cases where the simplest 

 type of rockwork only is attempted, and where there are no 



