The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Rockweler Rockgardens
What The Rock Garden Offers
ROCK GARDENING has been termed the most intriguing of all forms of gardening.
Certain it is that it possesses a fascination of its own: and that in recent years more and more persons have been caught by the spell of it, and are seeking information concerning both the why and the how of rock gardening.
What is a rock garden?
It is logical to assume that it is a garden in which rocks are a prominent feature.
And yet that description is hardly definite enough. For although rock gardening is a comparatively new type of gardening, and is as yet less well defined than other types, nevertheless the term "rock gardening" has already come to mean not only a garden built with rocks, but also a particular style of gardening, employing plants of certain kinds and with definite characteristics.
It is true that there are many different forms of rock gardens. They vary in size from a few square feet to acres in extent. In conception and execution they also range from those of greatest simplicity to those intricately elaborate; and, incidentally, in cost from a few dollars to hundreds of thousands. But any real rock garden worthy of the name may be immediately identified as such, whether it graces a corner of the grounds of the most modest cottage or the sloping hillside of a millionaire's estate.
And yet one may spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars in piling up stones and setting out plants, without achieving a rock garden. Rocks and plants alone, no matter how prodigally provided, will not assure the creation of the thing we are after.
The first essential of a real rock garden—no matter on what scale it may be built—is that it shall look natural.
Any attempt which falls short of this becomes at best merely a collection of rock plants, which is very different indeed from a rock garden. And it must be kept in mind that a formal rock garden is a contradiction in terms—"there ain't no sich animile!"
ROCK GARDENS FOR SMALL PROPERTIES
Fortunately this essential effect of naturalness in rock garden making is not wholly, or even primarily, dependent upon the size of the garden. It is true that with plenty of room to work in, one may produce results which upon a very small scale would not be possible. And yet a truly charming rock garden may be built within a very limited area. At some of the recent flower shows, there have been a few excellent examples of rock gardens covering but a few square yards of exhibition space—even though it must be admitted that most of these displays labeled "rock gardens" are anything else but!
