xx INTRODUCTION 



cannot defend the rock garden on the same principle; 

 and we may say at once that, if it were possible to 

 have only one kind of garden, the formal garden would 

 be the kind to choose. But luckily that is not so; many 

 different kinds of gardening are possible, and many 

 different kinds of pleasure are to be got from them. 

 The pleasure of the formal garden is the most uni- 

 versal, the most sure, and the most lasting. Any one 

 who knows nothing at all of plants or horticulture 

 can enjoy a formal garden; and if it changes hands 

 its beauty can be easily maintained, since there is a 

 routine of formal gardening which most professional 

 gardeners understand. On the other hand, you must 

 have a peculiar interest and delight in plants for their 

 own sake if you are to take a real pleasure in a rock 

 garden; while the knowledge necessary for the proper 

 cultivation of a rock garden is not usually possessed 

 by professional gardeners, so that when a rock garden 

 changes hands and loses the care and skill of its orig- 

 inal possessor it is apt to run wild and become a mere 

 confusion of coarse-growing plants. But these objec- 

 tions to the rock garden are the very reasons why the 

 true rock gardener takes a peculiar delight in it; and 

 it is a curious fact that every gardener with a real 

 love of his art tends sooner or later to become a rock 

 gardener and to take a greater pleasure in his rock 

 plants than in any others. This may seem both wrong 

 and incomprehensible to those who are not gardeners; 

 but they must remember that the gardener not only 

 takes a pleasure in his flowers when they are grown, 



