78 



IRISH GARDENING. 



The Reader. 



The Rock Garden. 



There has recently appeared a book entitled " My 

 Rock Garden," by Mr. Reg-lnald Farrer, which we feel 

 certain will be welcomed with enthusiasm by all true 

 lovers of hardy plants. It is a bvok in the best sense of 

 the word, written b}' one who is not only thoroughly 

 conversant with his subject, but imbued with an ardent 

 love of it, and who possesses moreover the power of 

 expressing clearly and forcibly what is in his mind. He 

 sets out with an avowal of his distrust of dogmatism, 

 declaring that nowhere is it more misplaced than in 

 horticulture The first chapter deals with the formation 

 of the garden. The Japanese, he admits, are " the 

 absolute masters of rock garden — before whose names 

 one must go helpless to one's knees in admiration." 

 "They," he says, "care more for congruity of vegetation 

 in the scheme than for flowers as flowers." Yet, strange 

 to relate, though he holds that of Alpine plants and the 

 cultivation of them for their own sake the Japanese have 

 no notion, he has to admit that, while the Japanese have 

 common names for all, even the most rare of their 

 Alpines, few of our most rare and beautiful native plants 

 are known by any other than the botanical name, while 

 of these the majority are known only to botanists. 

 This appears rather contradictory. The fact seems to 

 be that the Japanese landscape gardener, for whom he 

 expresses such devout admiration, selects some piece of 

 nature on a grand scale and proceeds to reproduce it 

 within the confines of his garden. It follows that, if he 

 is to be consistent, he must not only copy the rock 

 formation — a point which our author is very insistent 

 on — but he must likewise attempt to reproduce the plant 

 associations. This probably has had something to do 

 with the production of those pigmy trees we are so 

 familiar with from that quarter. Given the problem to 

 reproduce a landscape on a tiny scale, he durst not lea\e 

 out his trees. On the other hand, giant pines would be 

 ridiculously out of proportion in this miniature landscape. 

 He overcomes the difficulty by an elaborate and tedious 

 process of dwarfing ; while, at the same time, he 

 succeeds, to a marvellous degree, in retaining the 

 characteristic form of the species when normally de- 

 veloped. So with flowers ; they must necessarily enter 

 but sparingly into his scheme, otherwise there would be 

 too much detail. The Japanese gardener is indeed an 

 artist, and this because he has learnt the value of things. 

 Above all, he must have congruity if he is to create an 

 entirely satisfying picture. 



While, as we have remarked, the writer holds that it is 

 necessary to follow some geological formation in the plan 

 of the rock garden, he contends that it is quite otherwise 

 with the vegetation to be employed. " No plant," he 

 says, " comes amiss to the purpose if only it is pretty and 

 suited to its place in size and habit." " If Ourisia from 

 Chili will thrive in one corner, there he shall go, and if I 

 shall so please he shall have the Japanese Liliiiin ntbelluiii 

 underground, and the Siberian columbine on his left, and 

 the Canadian phlox on his right ; }es, and at the back 

 shall be Chinese bamboos and Himalayan rhododen- 

 drons." Now, it would appear to us that, if you are to 



imitate a mountain gorge or say a Matterhorn, you must 

 not stop with the configuration of the land ; you must also 

 allow that there is such a thing as plant geography, and 

 that there are natural associations among plants that 

 harmonise with the physical character of the site, con- 

 trolled also by various other factors. 



There is, however, only too good ground to justify 

 his strong language of revolt against the hideous jumble 

 of stones and earth, not to speak of glass and clinkers, 

 that is usually called a rockery. He admits that the Kew 

 Rockery, in which we have never detected any theory 

 of geological formations, "offers everyone a model." It 

 is indeed difficult to overpraise the rockery at Kew. It 

 is the work of an artist who uses rocks with a purpose it 

 is true, but not as a demonstration in geology. 



With the objection he urges against double flowers 

 we personally are inclined to agree, though many must 

 hold it to be rank heresy. He further professes a 

 general preference for botanical over popular names for 

 plants, another heresy, which he skilfully defends, con- 

 tending that as a rule Latin names are " more euphonious 

 and invariably more descriptive than any English 

 equivalent, where it exists." 



When he enters on his task of describing the denizens 

 of the rock garden he handles the subject with a peculiar 

 felicity of description, though somewhat tinged by an 

 eccentricity of expression, which, however, none of those 

 for whom the book is intended would find fault with. 

 He speaks of his plants as personalities. In one place 

 he interrupts his subject to remark that "a well-bred 

 Alpine appeals to one primarily as a personalit)-, an 

 interesting, shy, rather proud character." He speaks 

 of them as " children " to be loved "for their individu- 

 alities, their little ways, their personal appeal, not at all 

 for any accident of gaudy colour or obviousness." 



We have nothing but admiration for the way in which 

 he introduces the nature of the plant's requirement. 

 This he does by picturing it in its native environments. 

 Here is a sample — " The Coliunbines as a race belong 

 to the lower, lighter scrub of Alpine woods all along the 

 great mountain chains of the world. Remember how 

 they lodge and dodge behind bushes on their native 

 hills when thej' can, and give them such similar pro- 

 tection in the garden." But every page bristles with 

 sentences which tempt us to quote. 



In the middle of a long chapter on Saxifrages the 

 author introduces, apparently by way of relaxation to the 

 reader, the subject of wall gardening-, and in no uncertain 

 voice condemns it altogether as an end to set out with.t 

 F"or, he contends, "it sins against the cardinal rules of 

 art and of horticulture," because " it aims at being two 

 things at once — a wall and a garden." "The real 

 dignified wall garden is that which sets out to be a wall 

 and a wall only." " Such," he remarks, "are the great 

 walls of St. John's at Oxford," where " the only 

 gardener that they know is Time, who sows them 

 cunningly, with the result that they end by being doubly 

 beautif^ul— a magnificent wall in the first place; and 

 then, accidentally, a garden of pleasant flowers." 



These few comments of ours we confess are entirely 

 unworthy of the sul^ject that has suggested them, nor 

 can our quotations convey an idea of the charm that 

 pervades the book. We can only express our thank- 

 fulness that the book has been written. It may do some- 

 thing to restore that conception of a garden which, to 

 quote his words, " the sixteenth and seventeenth century 

 knew," before the appearance of the " Jardin Anglais," 

 with its " sham landscapes, sham wilderness, sham ruins, 

 wobbling walks," &c. ; or of the Victorian era, with the 

 scarlet pelargonium as "the National flower," before 

 which "and its dread assessors, blue lobelia and yellow 

 calceolaria, all the gracious, beautiful flowers of long 

 ago" took flight "like fairies at the approach of 

 trippers" : when Liliuin candiduiu, daffodils, and crown 

 imperials "were pitchforked over the wall" to make 

 room for " dingy perilla and alternanthera." — W. B. B. 



