OF SHRUBS AND THEIR PLACING 3 
no difference whatever. It is as easy to be right, and as 
fatal to be wrong, in four feet of ground—or four inches 
—as in four acres. Critics, public and private, said of 
My Rock-Garden that it would depress the gardener 
whose opportunities were small, by insisting on vast un- 
attainable perfections. ‘Therefore let me here make my 
vehement Apologia by declaring that such an accusation 
ought to be, and surely is, absurd. For, as a matter of 
fact, the smaller the rock-garden the easier it is to build 
it beautifully and in harmony. It is in dealing with big 
ambitious spaces that the designer can most readily go 
astray. But in a ten-yard strip at Brixton or Balham 
you can triumphantly enjoy a thing of beauty as perfect 
as the Kencho-ji or the Koraku-en—yes, and a paradise 
as rich in lovelinesses as any upland prairie of the Alps. 
And the key to all this perfection is not space, or money, 
or ambitious stonework. ‘The key is simply the one 
word, proportion. Proportion, above all, in placing the 
stone you have, proportion in adjusting to your stones 
the miniature pines and firs you set among them. With 
six stones, two conifers, and four Alpines, I would engage 
to make in a yard of ground a view that should be 
beautiful and satisfying and harmonious. 
This is not the vain boast of a hierophant, but the 
plain statement of one who loves alike both tree and 
rock. Anybody in the world with eyes to see, with five 
shillings to spend, and six feet or so of soil to spend it 
on, can easily do as well, and very likely a great deal 
better—seeing that I only speak from affection and 
experience—not from any secret store of occult wisdom. 
If any reader doubts me, Jet him take two plain block- 
shaped mossy stones, of which the one is larger than the 
other. Let him lay the smaller on a downward slope from 
left to right; let him lay the other, the larger, behind it, 
on a downward slope from right to left, so that their ends 
