OF SHRUBS AND THEIR PLACING 3 



no difference whatever. It is as easy to be right, and as 

 fatal to be wrong, in four feet of ground — or four inches 

 — as in four acres. Critics, public and private, said of 

 My Rock-Garden that it would depress the gardener 

 whose opportunities were small, by insisting on vast un- 

 attainable perfections. Therefore let me here make my 

 vehement Apologia by declaring that such an accusation 

 ought to be, and surely is, absurd. For, as a matter of 

 fact, the smaller the rock-garden the easier it is to build 

 it beautifully and in harmony. It is in dealing with big 

 ambitious spaces that the designer can most readily go 

 astray. But in a ten-yard strip at Brixton or Balham 

 you can triumphantly enjoy a thing of beauty as perfect 

 as the Kencho-ji or the Koraku-en — yes, and a paradise 

 as rich in lovelinesses as any upland prairie of the Alps. 

 And the key to all this perfection is not space, or money, 

 or ambitious stonework. The key is simply the one 

 word, proportion. Proportion, above all, in placing the 

 stone you have, proportion in adjusting to your stones 

 the miniature pines and firs you set among them. With 

 six stones, two conifers, and four Alpines, I would engage 

 to make in a yard of ground a view that should be 

 beautiful and satisfying and harmonious. 



This is not the vain boast of a hierophant, but the 

 plain statement of one who loves alike both tree and 

 rock. Anybody in the world with eyes to see, with five 

 shillings to spend, and six feet or so of soil to spend it 

 on, can easily do as well, and very likely a great deal 

 better — seeing that I only speak from afi^ection and 

 experience — not from any secret store of occult wisdom. 

 If any reader doubts me, let him take two plain block- 

 shaped mossy stones, of which the one is larger than the 

 other. Let him lay the smaller on a downward slope from 

 left to right ; let him lay the other, the larger, behind it, 

 on a downward slope from right to left, so that their ends 



