ROCK GARDENING 67 



picturesque scenery on the Atlantic coast. There is nothing 

 prettier than a lawn in its proper place, and nothing more 

 costly, vexatious, or futile than a lawn where nature does not want 

 one. I believe we have spent millions in carting off rocks and 

 carting on soil to attain a commonplace and conventional beauty, 

 where thousands would have sufficed to restore and develop the 

 inherent beauty of the region. 



There are two kinds of pleasure any one may have in making 

 a house and garden. The easy and obvious pleasure is to incor- 

 porate all the ideas we like best, to choose a style we have admired 

 elsewhere, to plant the flowers we love best. Such efforts produce 

 houses that do not fit their environment, and gardens that lack 

 distinctiveness and charm. The finer and surer pleasure comes 

 from discovering the hidden laws and in giving them the fullest ex- 

 pression. No houses in the world fit their surroundings better 

 than the stone farm houses of the Lake District, because they are 

 built of native stone in such a way as to resist the abnormally high 

 rainfall of the region. No garden in the world is lovelier than a 

 bit of rocky land at Haverford, Pa., where the characteristic 

 beauty of rock-loving plants is allowed the fullest expression. 



I came home from England with a determination to find out 

 what rock-loving plants are native to America, and what sort of 

 pictures we can make with them. The first encouragement I got 

 was from the catalogues of specialists who collect native plants. 

 These men offer about fifty species of rock-loving flowers at prices 

 ranging from eight dollars to thirty dollars per one thousand 

 or at the rate of one to three cents a plant. Doubtless the plants 

 are not as good as nursery-grown plants, because the roots 

 have little or no earth about them. Doubtless they have to be 

 handled more carefully until they become established. But the 



