HOW TO BUILD A SMALL ROCK GARDEN. 



331 



HOW TO BUILD A SMALL BOOK GAEDEN. 

 By A. Glutton Beock, F.E.H.S. 

 [Read August 2, 1910.] 



Rock gardens in this country are often designed, built, and planted by 

 those who have no further concern with them. That, I suppose, is the 

 reason why. they are often faulty in all respects. The designer is not 

 the gardener, and so does not correct his faults from experience. He is 

 in the same case as an architect who should be always building houses 

 and never living in them. I cannot claim to have a large experience in 

 making rock gardens, but I have designed, built, and planted my own 

 for myself, and experience has shown me where I was wrong very 

 quickly and rather painfully. For my errors have either caused some 

 of my plants to ail or die, or else they have made part of my rock 

 garden look ugly. The main object of this paper is to prevent others 

 from falling into the same errors. 



I cannot give any general plan for a rock garden, because the nature 

 of the plan must depend upon the size of the rock garden and the 

 cliaracter of its site. Most of us have to make the best of exisiing 

 conditions. I have had to make the best of a northerly slope, and 

 I envy those who can make the best of a southerly one. The soil 

 of my slope is dry and sandy, therefore it suffers more from drought 

 than from lack of drainage. I could obtain southerly aspects only by 

 digging a valley across my slope, and, even so, more of my rock garden 

 looks north than south. But in my first plan I made one elementary 

 mistake. I allowed one end of my valley to be open to the north-east, 

 so that the north-east winds of March swept up it and killed off many 

 southern plants that had just managed to keep alive through the winter. 

 Therefore I will begin with this obvious piece of advice : Construct your 

 rock garden so that the southerly part of it is . thoroughly sheltered 

 from the north and north-east, and, if possible, let the shelter be 

 provided by the rock garden itself, not by hedges or trees. A rock 

 garden should be in a situation as open as possible, so that it may have 

 plenty of sun and fresh air. Trees and hedges and tall shrubs load the 

 winter air with moisture, and they aj'e out of scale with the plants and 

 rock-work of a rock garden. There are plenty of plants, both easy and 

 beautiful, that will thrive on a northerly slope and take no harm from 

 bitter winds. Such a slope is the best possible protection for the more 

 delicate plants grown on the other side of it. 



As to the general shape of a rock garden, that must depend, of 

 1 course, upon the site. If it is a valley, its main direction had better 

 : be N.E. and S.W., so that its slopes face S.E. and N.W. But, what- 

 ever the main direction may be, it is easy by windings and jutting 



