Ideal 
Hillside 
Garden 
A Natural 
Slope 
Developed 
Kind of 
Stones 
Advised to 
Be Used 
Hillside (gardens 
mass of bloom on a slope or series of terraces 
is the ideal hillside garden, often mistakenly termed Rock 
Garden, for true Rock Gardens in the Orient, notably in 
China, feature the tumbled irregularity and fantastic 
shapes of the rocks themselves, with very little plant- 
growth among them. 
Where one has a natural slope, it may be built up with¬ 
out a great deal of labor, and transformed into a garden of delight 
by terracing it, and confining sufficient good, growing loam for 
various types of plants, through the skillful placing of large or 
medium-sized stones, here and there, with careful carelessness. 
Embed these deep into the hillside with very little surface exposed, 
in order that they may hold the moisture and keep the soil from 
slipping away from the plants. Pack the soil tightly around these 
rocks. Be sure no airpockets are left. The deep spaces between them 
will afford that amount of nourishment required by those plants 
that thrive on slopes. One of the greatest advantages in making a 
Rock Garden, artificially, is the possibility of having many pockets 
of different, friable soil mixtures (acid, neutral, etc.) whose basis 
is topsoil, in which one may experiment with rare, unusual plants. 
Select stones large enough that there may be sufficient space be¬ 
tween them to prevent the soil in the various pockets from inter¬ 
mingling. Varying their sizes gives, also, a more artistic effect, 
just as avoiding the standing on end of many odd-shaped speci¬ 
mens, or the use of rounded, small-sized stones in profusion. The 
general strain of the stratification in which every type of rock is 
found in Nature’s garden appears more realistic when followed in 
transporting them to other locations. Particularly on a hillside, 
the freshly broken surface of a stone should never be exposed. 
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