Abstract
THE author of “The Parks, Promenades, and Gardens of Paris,” presents us here with a work which will be of great value to every lover of gardening. Although the formal and unsightly monstrosities of Loudon's “Landscape and Suburban Gardener” are now happily out of date, there is probably no department of landscape gardening in which a cruder and more artificial taste is still displayed than in the construction of rock-work. Not only is the prevalent style of rockery faulty from an aesthetic point of view, but, as Mr. Robinson shows, it is eminently unfitted for the growth of Alpine plants, which even when their stems reach only a few inches above the ground, strike their roots feet, and even yards, into the soil with which the crevices in the rock are filled, in order to enable them to withstand the sudden droughts to which they are subject. Messrs. Backhouse, of York, have shown how, by careful attention to the conditions under which plants thrive in their native habitats, many ferns and flowering plants which are usually seen only in greenhouses, can be successfully grown on out-of-door rockeries; and if the directions given by Mr. Robinson are carefully followed, any professional gardener or private gentleman, with the appliances ordinarily found in a moderately-sized garden, will be able to produce results which will astonish his friends and neighbours. The descriptive list of Alpine flowers, with the soil and treatment suited to each, is complete and valuable; some of the illustrations are pretty, others are on too small a scale to be effective.
Alpine Flowers for English Gardens.
By W. Robinson. (London: J. Murray. 1870.)
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Alpine Flowers for English Gardens . Nature 1, 603 (1870). https://doi.org/10.1038/001603a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/001603a0