LARGE ROCK-GARDENS 91 



could be made. By using native plants at the upper 

 end, and then by degrees coming to plantings of 

 foreign things best suited to wild ground, such as the 

 white Wood Lily (Trillmm) of Canada and the 

 northern States of America, the wilder ground would 

 pleasantly and imperceptibly jom hands with the 

 garden, and would be without any of the painful 

 shocks and sudden jolts that so often afflict the soul 

 of the garden-artist on his journey round even well- 

 ordered rockeries of the usual type. I venture to 

 repeat my own firm conviction that this kind of 

 gardening can only be done well and beautifully by a 

 somewhat severe restraint in numbers of kinds. The 

 eye and brain can only take in and enjoy two or three 

 things at a time in any one garden picture. The 

 lessons taught by nature all point to this ; indeed 

 one thing at a time is best of all ; but as all natural 

 or wild gardening is a compromise, the nature- 

 lessons must be taken mainly as the setting forth of 

 principles. If these principles are well taken in, and 

 digested and assimilated, we shall find no difficulty 

 in rightly using that part of their teaching which 

 bears upon gardening, and we shall see how to treat 

 wild nature, not by slavish imitation, not by driving or 

 forcibly shaping, but by methods that can hardly be 

 described in detail, of coaxing and persuading into 

 pictorial effect. 



The upper end of my little dell I suppose to be 

 to the south, so that the rocky wall-head is always 



