24 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



the large and lovely family of Campanulas, but, though the plants 

 are perfectly hardy and easy to grow, the flowers do not survive 

 our July sunshine very long, so that visitors, seeing a rock garden 

 after June, may well be disappointed over the lack of color and 

 brilliance. Linum yerenne is a lovely summer-flowering plant, 

 rather large perhaps, but the blue flowers succeed each other for a 

 very long time, and the foliage is soft and graceful. These alpine 

 pinks bloom all through June and are the greatest joy because of 

 their fragrance. Their foliage is always an addition, being soft 

 mats of that gray green shade which is so becoming to all flowers. 



Here are more June flowers, Campanula longistyla, a biennial 

 like the Canterbury bell, but a real beauty and easily raised from 

 seed. The little white flower above is Silene rupestris, one of the 

 easiest plants to grow and always an addition wherever it sows 

 itself. The lower white flower is Arenaria montana, not at all 

 easy with us, but in the shade it consents to thrive. Above is the 

 foliage of the Saxifraga cordifolia, which you saw a few minutes ago. 



In April, May, and June, there are always masses of flowers in 

 the rock garden, and the early flowers are after all the ones we 

 enjoy most, after being deprived of them all winter long, and before 

 the heat in the mornings and the mosquitoes in the evening drive 

 us indoors. 



Another very important reason why rock gardens should become 

 known in this country is that a rock garden can be made on the 

 smallest piece of ground. My own rock garden, which already 

 boasts of over 350 varieties, is only about 13 yards long and 8 yards 

 wide. 



Mr. Reginald Farrer, in his charming book "The Rock Garden," 

 says it is really by far the cheapest and most graceful form of 

 gardening. "It has become, and is hourly still more universally 

 becoming, the pet passion of the man who has small means and 

 only a small plot of ground to play with." And this in England, 

 where labor was so cheap. 



Position. 



A rock garden does not look well in a landscape or near the formal 

 lines of a building or a road, and it should be put in a secluded 



