The Value of Ashes It is one of the wonders
of the English garden that it can induce plants from the mountains even of Asia and Europe to flourish on the plain. Our rock, or scree gardens, to use a phrase growing into favour, multiply and improve out of all recognition. The earlier rockery that resembled an ash- heap has almost gone ; but one antique superstition has come back as a standard belief. Research workers proved conclusively of the ordinary garden that the habit of the lazy gardener who mixed ashes with the soil for the sake of easier digging by so much diminished the fertility of the soil. In some rock gardens at any rate this conclusion does not hold. The difficulty in cultivating some rock plants is that the roots, so to 'say, must have air and exercise, both'. The exclusion of air may be almost as fatal as lack of moisture or, in the case of such treasures as the lithospermuin, the presence 'of time or chalk. In certain circumstances and under due control it 'is found that ashes may supply the air better than most other minerals. A' modicum of wisdom, if riot of aesthetic value, was to be found in the suburban rockery of Victorian dayS. Today, of course, some of the artists have reached such a point of extremity that they will not alloW any plant WhateVer to 'interfere with the beauty
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