The Rock Garden 101 



carefully guarded from our mid-summer sun and drought, thrive 

 in a situation swept by the wind. 



Evergreen trees make the best wind-break where a rock 

 garden cannot be planted on a protected hillside, but they must 

 be kept at a distance where the roots of the guardians will not rob 

 their wards. In addition to the taller evergreens, hemlocks, pines, 

 firs, and cedars, that are useful chiefly as a sun or wind screen in the 

 background, we have learned to utilise the broad-leaved native 

 evergreens for closer shelter rhododendrons, laurel and bay, 

 whose fine roots never forage far; and to punctuate points of 

 greatest interest, or exposure, among the most sensitive plants, with 

 those charming little dwarf pines, junipers, thuyas and retinis- 

 poras from Asia that nevertheless seem to belong to our rock 

 gardens by every natural right. In the lee of a very small ever- 

 green a choice alpine plant may be induced to live contentedly, 

 whereas, without the shelter, it would as certainly die a fact 

 mentioned in this connection only to show how almost any desirable 

 site, however exposed, may be utilised for a rock garden with the 

 help of proper protecting plants and trees. 



Rock gardens are not necessarily made on natural slopes to 

 simulate a bit of wild mountainous scenery in miniature, although 

 the best of them are. Some very successful ones have been created 

 on what was once level land. What is known as an underground 

 rockery is made by excavating an open passage down into the soil 

 and banking up the earth on either side of the cutting as fast as it 

 is dug, all the top soil having been previously removed and saved 

 to spread over the banks when finally graded, and to place in 

 pockets between the rocks where plants are to be set in. The 

 width of several feet at the entrance to the passage may be varied 

 and increased to fifteen or twenty feet farther on; and the depth, 



