Preface 



me to bring a deeper blush to the cheek of Mr. Bowles 

 than mantles on his Primulas in May, but facts, as Sairey 

 has so justly said, are stubborn and not easy drove. 

 Therefore we must speak the plain truth : Mr. Bowles 

 is a real gardener, and the real gardener works with love 

 and knowledge and personal devotion, and not with money 

 and orders issued to a nurseryman. The highest art is to 

 conceal art ; and accordingly the first and last essential 

 of the good rock garden is that it should not look like a 

 garden at all, but like the unharvested flower-fields of the 

 hills effortless, serene, and apparently neglected. And 

 to achieve this effect, as all who have tried it well know, 

 is the final ambition of the real gardener, and the very 

 last to be attained. For nothing is harder, in any walk 

 of art, than to strike the perfect note of calm assurance 

 which is the supreme success, and nothing short of it 

 without falling into the death in life of spick and spanness 

 on the one hand, or the more ferocious life in death of 

 slovenliness and anarchy on the other. But at first sight, 

 like all great works, from the Monna Lisa downwards, the 

 really good garden looks so simple and unaffected and 

 easy that those who base their admiration on a sense of 

 money spent and obvious artificial difficulties surmounted, 

 will be inclined to conclude at a glance that such a mass 

 of intermingled happy plants is a simple matter of luck 

 and neglect that any one could achieve. And this verdict 

 is the crowning prize of the good gardener, more worth 

 than many Standard cups. For let these complacent 

 people only try, that's all ; let them learn by experience 

 what it is to cope with things that want to be weeds, in 

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