A SUSSEX ROCK-GARDEN. 
A SUSSEX ROCK-GARDEN.* 
By F. J. Hanbury, F.L.S. 
[Read October 10, 1916; Mr. E. A. Bowles, M.A., F.E.S., F.L;S., in the Chair.] 
Rather more than two years ago our Secretary, Mr. Wilks, was 
staying with our late Treasurer, Mr. Joseph Gurney Fowler, at 
Tunbridge Wells. During this visit Mr. Fowler brought his guest one 
afternoon to see the Rock-garden which we had been constructing 
at East Grinstead during the previous four years. Unfortunately, 
we were away from home at the time, but Mr. Wilks subsequently 
wrote a very appreciative account of his visit, and shortly afterwards 
asked if I would give a lecture on the Rock-garden before the Royal 
Horticultural Society. This was some months before its construction 
was completed. I felt some misgiving, and stipulated that if I did 
I must ask for time to get a series of photographs prepared ; this being 
readily accorded, I assented to the suggestion, and it is in these 
circumstances that I am here to-day. 
I do not propose to take up much of your time with preliminary 
remarks. It is necessary, however, to say a little about the locality, 
altitude, geology, and climate of our district, in order that you may 
the better understand the conditions under which we have constructed 
and carried out the planting of the rock-garden. 
East Grinstead is in Sussex, about two miles from the Surrey 
border. The town is situated on a hill about 460 feet above sea-level. 
It is on the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway, about thirty 
miles from London, and the journey takes an hour, East Grinstead 
Station being a junction from which trains run in four directions. 
I mention these points merely to show that we are easily accessible 
from the South-Eastern Counties. 
Brockhurst is the name of my small estate, and it is situated nearly 
a mile south-east of the town, on the Lewes road. This road forms 
the north-eastern boundary of my land, from which the naturally un- 
dulating ground slopes by a fairly steep gradient to the south-west. 
The range of hills on which we are situated stretches in a more 
or less broken line from the neighbourhood of Tunbridge Wells in the 
east to beyond East Grinstead in the west, The ridge runs parallel 
to the great chalk ranges which form the North and South Downs 
respectively, and is almost equidistant from each. The rock of which 
* It will be readily appreciated how difficult it is to make a lecture that was 
illustrated with more than one hundred slides to read smoothly and intelligibly 
when space forbids more than about a tenth of the pictures used being 
reproduced. The latter part of the lecture is necessarily disjointed as it 
consisted of brief descriptions of each picture as it was shown on the screen. 
