120 GARDENS PAST AND PRESENT 



kloof. Who can foretell what fertile germ of in- 

 spiration may lie hid within such first essays ? It 

 is certain that the elemental idea of the rockery 

 has fulfilled itself in a wonderful way in the modern 

 rock garden. 



As far as memory serves, we need not search 

 far behind the clinker age for the earliest begin- 

 nings of the rock garden ; for it is more or less 

 the outcome of modern travel. It is true that 

 Alpine plants were not altogether an unknown 

 quantity to early British botanists, but they were 

 not much meddled with by the gardeners of old 

 time. A few saxifrages, under the folk-name of 

 sengreene, are figured in the Paradisus Terrestris, 

 with some Alpine primulas or beares-eares, an- 

 other old English name which lingers still in the 

 west country for the auricula. Ramondia is also 

 classed by Parkinson, though under protest, 

 amongst the primulas as the blew beares-eares with 

 borage leaves; and of soldanella he says, "This 

 groweth on the Alpes which are covered with snow 

 the greatest part of the yeare, and wdll hardly abide 

 transplanting." But among all the minute direc- 

 tions for his garden of pleasant flowers, there is 

 no mention of rock-work as a mode of growing 

 mountainous plants, though " a rocke or mount 

 with a fountaine in the midst thereof " may be 

 a part of the garden's delight, " according as every 

 man's conceit alloweth of it and they will be at 

 the charge." 



The greatest impetus to real progress in this 

 phase of English gardening was presumably given 

 by Mr Robinson when the earliest edition of the 



