The Winning Designs 



elusion that a rectangular plot of land with an area of 

 about 100 square feet does not offer much that is 

 desirable for such a feature. Broadly speaking, there 

 are two distinct types of rock garden. The one, 

 designed to reproduce in miniature those ruggedly 

 picturesque effects that one sees in naturally rocky 

 lands in such a way that each craggy prominence shall 

 carry the mind to that ' ' vaster multitude of moun- 

 tains/* and which shall reconstruct a picturesque com- 

 bination of rock and plant life within the area at one's 

 disposal in a way that, although the art employed is 

 purely imitative, the results shall be so accurate in 

 their accomplishment that they shall give the impres- 

 sion of being realistic parts of some greater whole. 

 Nor is this desire to bring within the confines of our 

 own garden plot little pictures of the great natural 

 facts to be deprecated because it is imitative. There 

 is no real beauty in anything that does not mirror 

 Nature. ' That beauty is the normal state is shown 

 by the perpetual effort of Nature to attain it," wrote 

 Emerson. I have spoken of this work as an "art," 

 well knowing that exception will be taken to the use of 

 the word in such an association. But it is an art, as 

 is every genuine effort that fulfils this condition ; 

 1 ' whatever is great in human art is the expression of 

 man's delight in God's work. ' ' Robbed of this aspira- 

 tion after the realistic imitation of natural effects, the 

 rock garden is without meaning or real beauty. It 

 has no other excuse fdr existence than that it shall be 

 to that ' ' vaster multitude of mountains ' ' what the 

 dainty miniature is to the larger epic painting. One 

 choice little bit, selected and skilfully arranged with 

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