2 
THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 
material must be adapted to the ■work, and in all coloured and for- 
mal scenes, the rocks should be used in huge blocks in piles and 
mounds, not to imitate caverns and rude cairns, but strictly as orna- 
ments to set off the beauties of other objects, or to give light or 
shadow as the case may be. This is rock-work, not rockery, and it 
involves the disposal of rough blocks in symmetrical masses or 
groups, not in wild and fantastic outlines, and it conveys the idea 
of artistic repose, not natural and rugged sublimity. The two ideas 
must not be confounded, for while a rockery may be a most fantas- 
tic, gloomy, romantic, or savage scene, according to the desire of 
those who construct it, and its fitness in this or that form to the 
scenes in which it occurs, rock-work must be artistic and elegant, 
every puerile conceit banished from it ; and the rough unhewn 
material used simply, because that, in the hands of an artist, may 
be made as appropriate and beautiful as the exquisitely sculptured 
forms which the chisel might have obtained from it. We put rocks 
in cabinets, and a mighty block of granite may be quite appropriate 
even on the terrace garden, and there, indeed, it may serve as a 
memorial of an event worth remembering. 
Suppose you have a neat little flower-garden, with a wooded 
lawn adjoining. This lawn, especially if it has a border of fruits, 
will be as frequently resorted to as the walks through the par- 
terres. Your long walks under embracing branches will be pleasant 
at all seasons, but much more pleasant both to you and your visitors 
if there are some few special arrangements made to please the eye. 
The gloom of green foliage is delightful, but how much is the joy of 
an avenue enhanced if light is seen at its termination. Now a 
border of shrubs, a bank of ferns, a bosky corner, or walks diverging 
into other scenes, may form the vanishing point of your perspective, 
and the calm shade has no relief therein. Let the gardener get 
together a barrowful of white stones of any kind, the larger the 
better, and let these be thrown down “ any how ” at the end of 
such a walk, and in an instant the entire aspect of the scene is 
changed. So far the object is accomplished ; a bank of light stones 
is evidently just the thing to make the avenue charming. It is of 
course not to remain for ever a mere barrowful “ flung into the 
void,” but is to be built up neatly, and properly planted, and may at 
last become a cairn after the fashion of the adjoining figure. 
Many uses for rock-work may be found, even in the immediate 
vicinity of the house and flower-garden. Wherever it is so used, it 
must be bright and artistic, pleasing the eye by contoast to the 
orderly lines that prevail around, yet harmonizing with sculpture, 
if need be, and with the bright scene it occupies, aud its use made 
legitimate by a display of plants that trail elegantly, or that look 
best when spread over raised surfaces, as most alpines do. Then 
where mounds are used there is no better mcde of constructing them 
than to form the foundation of brick-rubbish, and cover the whole 
with huge dark Btones, or with those conglomerated bricks which 
are cast from the kilns as refuse. If alpine plants are to grow on 
such a rockery, there should be provided for them a good depth of 
sandy loam, for unless they can root deeply they will not thrive. 
