2 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 



immensely to the height and dignity of the rock. In its 

 face, to preserve and enhance the eflPect, you may insert 

 Juniperus sanderiana, or lovely little Pinus sylvestris 

 beuvronensis~—& perfect Scotch fir in miniature, identical 

 in form and grace with its giant prototype, and therefore, 

 by its suggestion of being a great aged tree, making the 

 rock to which it clings into a very Cheddar Cliff or El 

 Capitan. 



The great point to aim at is the preservation of scale. 

 The view should be so arranged that these little shrubs 

 cease utterly to seem little shrubs. And this is no preach- 

 ment of unworthy pretentious artifice, it is the logical 

 carrying out of the artistic principles upon which the 

 Noble and Ancient Craft of the Rock-Garden is based. 

 For, in the beginning, the Rock-Garden, springing, like 

 all our noblest achievements in Art, Religion, and Philo- 

 sophy, out of the East, was far more intimately allied 

 with evergreen shrubs than with the ephemeral glory of 

 flowers. A beautiful Mimesis of Nature was wanted, 

 and, in the rocky glens that the garden set itself to follow, 

 evergreens play a far greater and more permanent part 

 than flowers. It is our risk that we have introduced a 

 complicating note into the rock-garden by looking on it 

 not only (and, I fear, subordinately) as a piece of mimic 

 mountain-scape, but also as a territory designed and 

 adapted for the growing of particular flowers. But the 

 flowers are so beautiful that no real division of our 

 allegiance may fairly be dreaded — so long as we remember 

 that shrubs, together with rock, make the backbone, the 

 salient note of the rock-garden, and that the placing of 

 our shrubs is no less vital than the placing of our rocks. 



Let no one tell me I am preaching too high a gospel. 

 If you are going to build a rock-garden, it is quite as 

 easy and quite as satisfactory to build it right as to 

 build it wrong. And the space at your disposal makes 



