INTRODUCTION. 
I need not warn my foes, and will not warn my friends. All good 
gardeners know that knowledge is a first-hand article; all good 
gardeners know that each must buy it for himself, and that the 
utmost any fellow-enthusiast can do is to use his own observation 
as a basement for suggestions and recommendations of special 
applications under invariable general rules as well possessed by 
one as by another; while their particular applications vary so 
from one garden to the next, that the advice of even the most 
veteran expert, in any special case (bemg drawn from what he 
himself has undergone, or seen other people undergo), can only 
be taken by its recipients as a well-meant suggestion, deserving 
some consideration. Therefore I give you my plant notes for 
what they are worth; good or bad, they represent my apex of 
effort on your behalf. To err, again, is human: who will pretend 
that such a pile of pages is virgin of error, inconsistency, or 
loose end? But let not the learned be ungenerously extreme 
to mark what is done amiss: whose pages are not sometimes 
speckled with a lapse or two? As to completeness, why, if 
absolute correctness is a sheer inaccessibility, completeness is 
not by any means less so. I dare not even begin to think of 
all the essentials I have probably left out; the very mention 
of completeness chills my soul with an impotent despair. 
Hastily I bring my apologies to a close, feeling words inade- 
quate. So here is a book of reference for the rock-gardener. 
If it serves for even a decade to keep him tolerably safe in the ~ 
mazes of catalogues, and abreast of some rare treasures that 
still look upon us from the land of hope, then I shall consider 
that my work has not been done in vain. And speaking for 
myself, I can only say that of all my garden-books this one 
will chiefly be my constant companion, guide, and solace. To 
me at least it is already a dictionary of real succour. It 
contains at least a thousand times as much knowledge as I 
myself possess, or can ever hope to attain. 
REGINALD FARRER. 
INGLEBOROUGH, 1914. 
lxiv 
