HOW TO BUILD A SMALL EOCK GAEDEN. 



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rocks or with rocks so placed in the ground that they look long. Strata 

 on a slope look most natural when they do not run horizontally, but 

 have themselves a slight slope up and down. The direction of strata 

 on one side of a valley should always be the same. Nothing looks 

 worse or more unnatural than a line of rocks sloping up in one direction, 

 foilow^ed by another line sloping down in the same direction. Yet the 

 strata should not be too long or too regular, and there is no difficulty in 

 breaking them with bold masses of rock if the contour of the rock garden 

 is sufficiently varied. 



In the hollow circular form of rock garden it is not so easy nor so 

 necessary to arrange rocks in strata unless the garden is very large. 

 There the best effects are produced by contrasts of bold steep rock-work 

 with more level spaces where the rocks are fewer. Where this is done 

 each mass of bold rock- work should seem to be a centre or nucleus of a 

 system of rocks, and the rocks in the intervening spaces should grow 

 Jess frequent the further away they are from these centres. A circular 

 rock garden is apt to look very chaotic where there are no contrasts of 

 this kind, and where the rocks are evenly distributed without any 

 system. Where the rock garden consists only of small mounds, it is 

 impossible to do much in the way of systematic arrangement of the 

 rocks. But if the gardener arranges them so that plants will thrive 

 among them they will not look absurd. The worst absurdities are 

 always produced by attempts to make a rock architecture without regard 

 to the welfare of the plant, just as the worst absurdities of architecture 

 itself are produced in buildings that are designed without regard to their 

 uses. You will often see rocks in nature that are not favourable to plant 

 hfe; but a rock garden is art, not nature, and the aim of all gardening 

 ; art is to make plants look beautiful. 



1 I come now to the arrangement of plants, and I can only speak 

 ; of their artistic arrangement. They vary so much in their needs that 

 ; it is impossible to give any general suggestions for their horticultural 

 I arrangement. The chief fault, I think, in most good rock gardens is 

 1 tha,t there are too many flowers in the flowering time. Many people 

 I think there cannot be too many flowers in any kind of garden. But 

 j if we try to analyse the peculiar beauty of wild flowers, and especially 

 I of mountain flowers, which it is so difficult to produce in our gardens, 

 i we shall find, I think, that it comes from the contrast between the 

 I flowers themselves and the flowerless spaces about them, and also from 

 the contrasts produced by the different habits of the plants. In a rock 

 garden, therefore, we should aim at varying our masses of blossom with 

 masses of flowerless growth and at broad contrasts of habit. Upon 

 contrasts of this kind a great part of its beauty will depend. But there 

 is another matter to be considered, namely, scale, and that is equally 

 1 important. The beauty of the smaller alpines is greatly marred when 

 they are near some coarser- growing lowland plant, and the lowland 

 ! plant suffers equally. In particular the smaller alpine shrubs seem to 

 lose all their character and propriety if vigorous herbaceous plants are 

 anywhere near them. Many people grow certain large plants reck- 



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