148 THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



come out of the ground in ways that the flowers and moss grow well 

 on them. 



In the present state of the art of garden design, rock gardens are 

 formed mainly by nurserymen ; these are not men who, as a rule, by 

 the very nature of their business, can give much attention to the study 

 of rocks in natural situations, or learn how the different strata crop 

 out in the ways most happy for vegetation, without which study we 

 think no good work in this way is possible. The work we see now is 

 often done better than the ugly masses of scoria and various rubbish 

 of the earlier " rock works," but it is still a very long way from what 

 is artistic. Simplicity is rarely thought of, or of the rock coming out 

 of the ground in any pretty way, of which we may see numerous 

 examples in upland moors in England, even without going to the 

 mountains or the Alps. On the contrary, we see pretentious rickety 

 piles of stone on stone, with pebbles between to keep the big ones up, 

 and forty stones where seven would be enough. 



A characteristic of these elaborate failures is a rocky depression, 

 often an ugly one, in the ground. This is by no means the most 

 likely thing in Nature to give the prettiest effects. If alpine and rock 

 plants wanted shelter, we could see some meaning in these depres- 

 sions, but the conditions that suit such plants are quite the opposite, 

 and a rock garden should be for the most part made on a fully 

 exposed rocky knoll. 



The fact that such bad work is usual is, however, no proof that we 

 cannot get nearer to the truth, and there is a good opening for one 

 who would devote himself to going on the hills and seeing the ways 

 in which rocks and flowers meet. He would not have to study only 

 the more imposing aspects of that charming subject, but also the 

 simpler ones, because in gardens in all that concerns the rocks we can 

 get only simple effects, and on a small scale. One of the commonest 

 mistakes is piling stone upon stone in such a way that there is no 

 room for grouping anything. If one were to take five or six of the 

 stones one sees in a rock garden, and simply lay them with the 

 prettiest and most mossy sides showing out of the bank in the right 

 kind of earth, one would get a better place for plants than a rock 

 garden made, it may be, of hundreds of tons of stone could give, 

 because then we should have room to group and mass them, without 

 which no good effect is possible. 



The common " rockery," like the common mixed border, is an 

 incoherent muddle, and can scarcely be anything else so long as the 

 present plan is followed. The plants hate it, and in effect it is very 

 like the rows of false teeth in the dentists' shops in St. Martin's-lane. 

 We should seek gardens of alpine flowers, with here and there a mossy 

 stone showing modestly among them not limiting one's efforts to 



