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Rustic Adornments. 
outskirts of the garden and throwing the soil into irregular mounds at the 
side, and if these are planted with shrubs at the top, and the sides adorned 
tastefully with burrs or stones, the sunny portions may be utilised for growing 
alpine plants, and the shady ones for ferns. We have ourselves made some 
very interesting nooks and corners in this manner, and have been able to 
grow alpines and ferns extremely well. As pointed out elsewhere, the fore¬ 
ground of a garden should be a bold free expanse of turf, and cut up as little 
as possible with formal beds. From this central foreground the turf should 
gradually melt away into nooks and corners and miniature valleys, and where- 
ever a slope occurs, it should be utilized for a rockery. But care must be 
taken not to make the rockeries too obtrusive by the too free use of stone or 
burrs. Sufficient should be employed to keep the soil in position and to 
form beds for the various plants, and no more. It should be remembered 
that the object of a rockery on a small scale is not so much to display the 
material it is constructed of as to provide a suitable home for the plants. 
A winding path leading from one portion of the garden to another often 
provides suitable positions for a little rockwork. Then, again, a charming 
rockery may be obtained by excavating a winding hollow from three to six 
feet deep and ten to twenty feet wide, and decorating the sides with stones or 
burrs. This will afford a splendid opportunity of growing not only alpines, 
but aquatics, ferns, and choice shrubs, and will make a grand feature in the 
garden. The rockery in the Royal Gardens, Kew, is of similar construction. 
The other type of rockery to which we wish to draw attention is one 
particularly suitable for a small garden. It enables the best use to be made 
of limited space for the culture of alpine plants, and takes the form of small 
raised beds or mounds on the level surface. These, however, must not be 
allowed to obtrude themselves too much, or they will mar the beauty of the 
garden and diminish the effectiveness of the plants, &c., grown on them. 
One of the most interesting and best grown collections of alpine plants 
existing in this country are cultivated on low rock beds in Mr. and Mrs. 
Minard CammelPs garden near Billinghurst, in Sussex. An excellent 
description of this garden appeared in Amateur Gardening , and we cannot do 
better than repeat it, as it shows so well how thoroughly adapted the plan is 
for growing all kinds of alpines. The correspondent—one of the highest 
authorities on the subject—who saw this garden, says So admirable an 
object lesson is it in alpine culture, so good an instance of how much may 
be done by good taste and knowledge, but without great outlay, that I think 
