How to form an Outdoor Fernery. 1 7 
chapters if I can help it, I will here offer a few general 
advices on the formation of ferneries out of doors. 
Provide as many aspects and degrees of declivity as 
possible within certain limits. One slightly irregular 
bank is to be preferred to a number of paltry ins and 
v outs, but if you have space and materials sufficient, let 
the work be somewhat intricate in order to obtain a 
variety of conditions to suit the various habits of the 
ferns you intend to grow. 
Large bodies of soil are absolutely necessary, as it 
is impossible to keep the roots moist enough during 
the hottest months of the year if they are in shallow 
soil, of which a large surface is exposed to the atmo- 
sphere. It is particularly important to bear this in 
mind in constructing the walls of a ruin, if it is in- 
tended to plant ferns on or in the walls. A space of 
one foot clear, filled in with earth, between the two faces 
of the wall, is the least that should be allowed in the 
smallest construction of the kind ; two or three feet of 
earth will be required in a ruin of dimensions large 
enough to serve as a garden-house or reading-room. 
Aim at wildness and apparent neglect in the arrange- 
ments up to a certain point. Dirt and disorder are 
as injurious to the ferns as to the morals of those who 
encourage such things, but primness is not desirable 
in a fernery ; the effects should tend towards the rustic 
rather than to the refined, and the materials used 
throughout should be of the quietest colours ; no gew 
gaws, no plaster casts, no blocks of coral or shiny 
shells should be mixed up with the work. 
% Robust- growing ferns planted on banks and mounds 
2 
