The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Rockweler Rockgardens
A GENERAL LIST OF PLANTS FOR THE ROCK GARDEN
In the last chapter of this book there is presented a list of the most satisfactory and easily grown rock-garden plants. This list, like most catalogs on the subject, includes plants from all of the foregoing groups. In most books on rock gardening, a large part of the space is devoted to the description of plants, and of individual varieties. This is as it should be, and to those who are taking up seriously this fascinating form of gardening, the acquisition of at least one or two of these larger volumes is by all means recommended. In this little book, however—as in its companion volumes of The Home Garden Handbook series—only a limited list of varieties can be described, the reader being referred to the catalogs, rapidly increasing in number and in excellence, now making a special feature of rock-garden plants, and in many instances devoted chiefly to them.
In addition to this general list, there will be found in the last chapter a number of lists of plants recommended for various purposes and conditions.
Bulbs For The Rock Garden
To one who thinks of bulbs in terms of Darwin tulips with three-foot stems, and the modern Giant Trumpet daffodils, in the spring garden, or of gladiolus and dahlias throughout the summer months, the rock garden would seem to offer no suitable place of residence for this important group of flowers. Many "complete" catalogs of rock garden plants contain never a whisper concerning bulbs, though often including shrubs and evergreens.
It may be argued that the bulbous flowers, even when dwarf enough to merit a place in the rock garden, are not sufficiently similar in habit of growth to other rock plants to entitle them to recognition. This, of course, is a matter of taste and not to be dogmatically settled one way or the other. The contention that bulbs are not legitimate subjects for the rock garden has had more weight abroad among the advocates of alpine gardening, pure and undefiled. In most American rock gardens, bulbs have been made welcome, and are likely to be used more rather than less in the future, as knowledge concerning them becomes more widespread. For one thing, they may be successfully grown over a much wider range of climatic conditions than the true alpines.
BULBS SUITABLE FOR THE ROCK GARDEN
But the fact that there are some bulbs which may be welcomed into the rock garden, makes it no less necessary to have them qualify as to size, habit of growth, and character.
