THE MOUNTAIN BOG 217 
hundred times more beautiful, a hundred times more 
verisimilar, a hundred times better adapted to their 
purpose, if thickly powdered with a surface of broken 
limestone chips, varying from the size of one’s thumb to 
that of a baby’s hand. These stones give drainage, preserv- 
ing moisture, and carrying moisture away for storage ; they 
offer protection, nourishment and guidance to the wander- 
ing roots; they enable underground runners to form their 
natural scattered colonies; they afford coolth in hot 
summer, and comfortable assistance in winter. And all 
this, finally, because of their greatest recommendation. 
For it is among just such broken rock that all these 
Alpine little bog-plants grow in their native places, and 
it is amid just such cool grey flakes that their gentle 
brilliance of carmine, azure, or lavender shines most 
delicate and pure. 
And yet, despite these obvious reflections, too many 
gardeners, luxuriating in superabundance of big, ugly 
rock, ignore the use and charm of small broken stone. 
The usual idea of a rock-garden is that of a wilderness 
of huge rocks, as big as you can afford, jostled together 
as close as they can stick, and then peppered with plants. 
Against this I would cry, with a loud voice, the paradox 
that in the rock-garden it is far easier to use too much 
stone than too little. Do not have a serried mass of 
rock; have surfaces of flat and sloping soil, with big 
stones suggested rarely, here and there, emerging perhaps 
in one bold crest or bluff, giving the restrained effect of 
the genuine mountains, which do not wear all their bones 
on the surface, but protrude them where they must, at 
worn, weather-beaten angles of their slope. Compared 
with these glorious originals, too many rock-gardens go 
astray in ostentatious superfluity of stone—yes, I must 
say it, from Sir Frank Crisp’s luxurious compilation of 
rock, down through many a milder, smaller composi- 
