The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Rockweler Rockgardens
And here and there one comes across a real-life planting which demonstrates that a very small but genuine rock garden is a possibility. These are not as yet numerous, it is true; but they are sufficiently frequent to prove that it can be done. The many small rock gardens which one sees, unsatisfactory from an artistic point of view, are the result of lack of information, or of taste, on the part of the gardener, rather than of any real difficulties in the way of planning or planting.
Rock gardening, as a matter of fact, is in many ways particularly adapted to the beautification of very limited areas. With a suitable selection of materials and plants, it may be made the most miniature of any form of gardening; and yet it is in no sense toy gardening, for the smallest rock garden may possess dignity, character, and charm.
And rock gardening is perhaps the most intimate of all types of gardening; probably in no other does the gardener become so well acquainted with his plants, or enter into such close association with them.
The plants themselves, with few exceptions, possess strong individualities. They do not have such huge nor such gorgeous colored blooms as most of the flowers with which we are more familiar. In fact, many of them have but tiny blossoms and depend upon a mass of these to produce the wonderful splashes of color which they bring to the garden picture. Others develop the charm which they hold for most people only upon fairly close acquaintance, but unquestionably they do develop it. Their quaintness, their hardiness, their infectious cheerfulness, their shyness,—or frankly bold assertiveness, despite their miniature size,—are qualities which give them a personality not possessed to the same degree by any other group of plants.
It is undoubtedly the fascination which these little plants themselves possess, as well as the possibility of using them, in connection with rocks, to create beautiful garden pictures, that has given rise to the present astonishing interest in rock gardening.
This interest is not a passing vogue, or garden style. Rock gardening, while its popularity is comparatively recent, is a sound, sensible, and wholly practical kind of gardening, which is certain to become more and more widely taken up and enthusiastically followed by American gardeners.
And though one may not have room for winding paths, nor possess glacier-wrought ledges and ravines, with which to make a start, it is possible to capture in much smaller space the real spirit of the rock garden. It was but a little nook of a garden, I fancy, but one where rocks had their place, in which was penned that brief but beautiful garden poem which runs:
