282 HOME FLORICULTURE 



them well. Observe how the rocks are piled together. 

 There is no suggestion of the stonemason. There is no 

 getting at any precise, formal rule to follow. All is 

 disorder, in one sense of the word, and yet everything 

 is in that perfect order which grows out of the eternal 

 fitness of things. Here a vine has taken root, and its 

 beauty softens the rugged outline of the rocks across 

 and over which it clambers, half concealing them. A 

 Fern has made itself a home in a crevice and flourishes 

 as you can never expect its fellow to in your rockery. 

 All kinds of wild things creep and clamber over the 

 gray stones — grass, weed, moss — all in perfect har- 

 mony with the place, and not one suggesting the 

 cultivated garden. 



The most pleasing rockery I have ever seen is one 

 that was not "built" at all. Still, it was made, and yet 

 it was an accident. A man was hired to draw some 

 great rocks of which to construct it. He drew them, 

 and unloaded them in a heap near the place where the 

 rockery was to be. When the owner came to begin 

 work, he was impressed with the idea that the careless, 

 haphazard way in which the stones were piled up was 

 vastly more like nature's way of doing such business 

 than anything likely to result from a more formal 

 effort, and he had the good sense to leave the heap 

 precisely as it was. This rockery is a pleasing one 

 because there is an entire absence of design or plan 

 about it. If he had rearranged the rocks of which it 

 is composed he would doubtless have spoiled it. 



If you can locate a rockery where it will seem as if 

 springing from a bank, or as being the continuation of 

 one, your chance of success with it will be much better 

 than it will if you have to build it on a level foundation. 

 Rocks, as a general thing, seem to have tumbled from 

 somewhere. They don't heap themselves together on 

 a flat surface. Choose a place, then, if possible, where 



