ROCKERIES. 



A FEW summers ago I watched with much in- 

 terest the construction of two rockeries 

 in a neighboring garden. The first step 

 taken was to saw off the top of a noble tree that 

 overshadowed the proposed site, leaving only the 

 great trunk with ungainly stumps of branches ; 

 these, in time, were peeled of their bark, thus 

 giving the whole thing a wierd, uncanny look, espe- 

 cially on a moonlight night. At the foot of the 

 tree, now shorn of its beauty, a vine was planted, 

 whose supposed duty was to cover up the ruin made 

 by the hand of man. Then the serious work of 

 building began, for which several wagon loads of 

 soil and quarried stone were requisite, as well as 

 the services of a mason. Slowly the walls arose, 

 layer upon layer, until, after many days, they were 

 completed, to the owner's great delight. There 

 they stood, within twenty feet of each other, two 

 wondrous mounds six feet high and five feet in 

 diameter, composed of many ponderous stones, 

 with here and there great yawning pockets, or 

 crevices, for the reception of plants. Surely such 

 rockeries as these would satisfy the most ambi- 



Fig. 8. Tea Blood. [See page dbj.) 



Fig 7. Tea Blood. {^See page 66j.) 



tious, and the owner seemed to take much pleasure 

 in them. But, fortunately, they had been built in 



the rear of the garden where they did not spoil the 

 effect of a nicely kept lawn, which latter fact is 

 worthy of 

 c onsidera- 

 t i o n . Many 

 persons imag- 

 ine rockeries 

 so ornament- 

 al that they ^ 

 deserve a 

 most conspic- 

 u o u s place, 

 sometimes 

 even in the 

 midst of a 

 lawn or a gar- 

 d e n , where 

 the sun shines 

 fiercest, 

 when, on the 

 contrary, 

 they should 

 be concealed 

 and o v e r - 

 shadowed by trees and shrubs. There are rock- 

 eries and rockeries, and while some of them merit 

 the ridicule they receive, the fact remains that, for 

 filling an out-of-the-way shady nook of the garden, 

 they are unequalled. But they must be properly 

 managed, not built up like a wall ; neither is it 

 necessary that they should be round, as many seem 

 to think. By cutting away part of a mound or 

 hillock of soil, the stones may be piled up against 

 it in such a way that they resemble the cropping- 

 out of a rocky substratum, thus forming a lodg- 

 ment for wild flowers ; and furthermore, the stones 

 of a rockery should never be white-washed, as this 

 not only spoils all their native beauty, but also 

 causes the radiation of heat to such a degree as 

 to prevent the growth of the plants. 



A very good way to make a rockery is first to 

 place some heavy stones firmly in position as a 

 foundation, cover them with soil, and then upon 

 the soil pile more stone, pushing them in as irregu- 

 larly as may be making the whole work look as little 

 like human handiwork as possible. It should ap- 

 pear as though Dame Nature had dropped a bit of 

 the forest in your garden. Then go to the woods for 



