V* 
284 
R us tic A dornments. 
perhaps, or rudely paved, and with plants encroaching upon them, and left 
none too regularly or formally between these mounds. There, roughly, is the 
simple plan upon which this alpine garden has been, easily and gradually, 
homemade. If I rightly recollect, it nowhere (or rarely) sinks below the 
original ground level, and therefore, doubtless, the soil for the mounds has 
been brought on. But were it desired to save that labour such soil, if good 
enough, might be excavated on the spot (as shown in the illustration on 
p. 281), and the hollows thus formed would then become in their lowest level 
the sunk pathways of the garden, while the sides of these hollows would 
become the lower flanks of the mounds. 
“ The one plan I believe to be better under some conditions ; the other the 
superior under others. Excavate I should say when the soil is light and the 
drainage ample, for the sunk levels thus secured will give moist lower levels 
for water-loving plants, such as so many bog plants exact. But where the 
soil is otherwise and in itself sufficiently retentive, or the situation low-lying, 
and where drainage is therefore the desideratum rather than aids to moisture 
excavation is generally better avoided, and the whole of the mounds kept 
above the original ground level. The wealth and quality of the choice alpines 
and other dwarf plants which met the eye as it glanced over this small garden 
was astonishing. For the secret, if such it be, is here well known, that to get 
the best and most congruous result from this glorious class of plants, shrubs, 
or weedy or tall subjects which would interrupt the coup d’oeil should not be 
intermixed ; that as much as possible of the surface of the garden may be 
brought into the picture at a glance. 
“ At the first glance one was inclined to find here a proof that the choicest 
and rarest mountain plants may be grandly grown on heaps of garden soil 
without aid from rock or from water. And so not a few may; and very 
many more lowland plants of great beauty, which pass for and resemble true 
alpines. With such let the gardener furnish the most of his mound garden, 
if it be not possible for him to bestow time and care in tending and watering 
it when made. But here time and constant care have been spent to grow 
well those plants which need them, and not only the many commoner beauties 
which need them not. For if the construction of the garden which I am 
describing has been simple and inexpensive, its furniture is choice, rich, and 
varied in the extreme; and though an equally gay, and, in a sense, perhaps an 
equally pretty garden (regarded merely as a colour arrangement) might be 
had without the expenditure of thought, labour, and money, not a little of 
