CHAPTER VII 



THE ROCK GARDEN 



A PRETENTIOUS pile of rickety rocks propped with 

 cobble stones, and a few sickly, sun-baked plants 

 straggling over them in a meaningless manner this 

 would seem to be the prevailing idea of a rock garden in too many 

 American dooryards. Yet a rock garden, treated in a naturalistic 

 and practical way, and fitted into the surrounding scene as if it 

 really belonged there, may be the most charming feature of a place. 

 Moreover, it may become the refuge of many unique and interest- 

 ing plants that would grow nowhere else, or of others, not alpine, 

 yet that thrive best among deep, cool, moist pockets of soil 

 between the rocks where one almost never sees them in our 

 over-conventional gardens. 



If there are no rocks on one's grounds, nor within easy hauling 

 distance, not only is the cost of making a rock garden a serious 

 matter, but the artificiality of it is likely to be so apparent as to 

 make the effort scarcely worth while. Only the Japanese seem 

 to have the selecting and placing of garden stones reduced to an art 

 that defies detection. Lives there the American who would make 

 long pilgrimages to the mountains to secure one weather-worn rock 

 of just the right shape and tint to fit into his garden picture ? 

 Where some fine rocks in a desirable situation naturally occur on 

 one's grounds, of course it is sheer waste not to use them, and 

 painfully inartistic to create artificial rockwork unless it can be so 

 skilfully added to what nature offers as to seem to be a part of her 

 design. Immense sums of money and glorious opportunities for 



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