Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

and that most objectionable of conifers, a Wellingtonia, grows almost in the middle of the garden. I cannot cut it down, as this would deprive the lawn-tennis ground of the only shade it has. How I long to turn that lawn- tennis ground into a sunk Dutch garden, with its low red wall all round it ! Yet I know I should miss them very much if I no longer heard the cries of the lawn-tennis game or the more recent click of the croquet-balls. The top of the low wall, in front of the south side of the house, is a long bed of Tea Eoses. Mr. Robinson names all the best sorts, so I need not do so. They do not flourish very well with us, I confess, and yet certainly better than any other Eoses. It is their first flowering in June that is not very good. From August to October they are a great delight, flowering at intervals during all that time, and sending up long lovely shoots of brown leaves, that one can gather without scruple, as they are sure to be in- jured by the winter frosts ; and the more the blooms are cut, the more they flower. At the other side of the lawn- tennis ground I have a little rockery, the system of which I can recommend to anyone who wants room and various aspects for plants without blocking out the rest of the garden or the distance beyond. We dug a large deep hole in the ground, carrying up gradually a small irregular path to the level of the ground on each side, roughly placing pieces of flat stone on each side of the path (to form steps) and all round the hole at the bottom. We kept the earth from falling by facing it with a wall of stones, stuck flatly and irregularly into the earth ; this makes an excellent cool and deep root-bed for many Alpine and other plants. When it rains, there is a natural tendency for the water to drain down in all directions into the hole at the bottom. This hole had been dug deeper in the middle, and puddled with a little clay, not cement ; and arge stones were laid in the bottom, to retain the MAY 89 water longer than it naturally would remain in our sand. For really dry weather some pipes are laid on undergound to a tap in another part of the garden, from which the water runs into a tub at the top of the rockery for watering, and the overflow falls into the hole. In this way our tiny water-bed is kept moist in the dryest weather. We grow in the water one of the most beautiful of our river plants, the Ranunculus lingua, or Water Buttercup. It has a noble growth and large, shining, yellow flowers, which bloom for a long time. Its only fault is that, if given the position it likes, it grows and increases with weed-like rapidity, and in a small space must be ruth- lessly thinned out when it begins to grow in spring, and often later as well. We have in the hole Japanese Primulas and Japanese Iris (Kempferi), though they do not flower as well as in the dry bed above, which is the hottest, dryest, most sunny place in the garden ; and the only attention they get, after being planted in good leaf mould, is some copious waterings when the flower-buds .are formed. They have the largest, finest flowers I have ever seen in England. I must not forget our native Forget-me-nots, which, Tennyson says, ' grow for happy lovers.' It is a much more persistent flowerer than the garden kind. In his ' Lancashire Garden ' Mr.