THE MOUNTAIN BOG 217 



hundred times more beautiful, a hundred times more 

 verisimilar, a hundred times better adapted to their 

 purpose, if thickly powdered with a surface of broken 

 limestone chips, varying from the size of one's thumb to 

 that of a baby's hand. These stones give drainage, preserv- 

 ing moisture, and carrying moisture away for storage ; they 

 offer protection, nourishment and guidance to the wander- 

 ing roots ; they enable underground runners to form their 

 natural scattered colonies ; they afford coolth in hot 

 summer, and comfortable assistance in winter. And all 

 this, finally, because of their greatest recommendation. 

 For it is among just such broken rock that all these 

 Alpine little bog-plants grow in their native places, and 

 it is amid just such cool grey flakes that their gentle 

 brilliance of carmine, azure, or lavender shines most 

 delicate and pure. 



And yet, despite these obvious reflections, too many 

 gardeners, luxuriating in superabundance of big, ugly 

 rock, ignore the use and charm of small broken stone. 

 The usual idea of a rock-garden is that of a wilderness 

 of huge rocks, as big as you can afford, jostled together 

 as close as they can stick, and then peppered with plants. 

 Against this I would cry, with a loud voice, the paradox 

 that in the rock-garden it is far easier to use too much 

 stone than too little. Do not have a serried mass of 

 rock ; have surfaces of flat and sloping soil, with big 

 stones suggested rarely, here and there, emerging perhaps 

 in one bold crest or bluff, giving the restrained effect of 

 the genuine mountains, which do not wear all their bones 

 on the surface, but protrude them where tliey must, at 

 worn, weather-beaten angles of their slope. Compared 

 with these glorious originals, too many rock-gardens go 

 astray in ostentatious superfluity of stone — ^yes, I must 

 say it, from Sir Frank Crisp's luxurious compilation of 

 rock, down through many a milder, smaller composi- 



