The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California

Rockweler Rockgardens

The Rock-Garden Foundation Planting. There is still an other use for a modified form of the rock garden which has been but little taken advantage of. This is the rock-garden foundation planting. I have never happened to come across, in any literature on rock gardening, a reference to this form of rock gardening. But I feel sure that it will prove to be another worth-while method of using these excellent plants.

I have seen a few such plantings successfully executed and have experimented sufficiently along this line myself to feel satisfied that there is a field here which has not yet been developed. In many sections where stones abound, and where ledges of rock crop out in the grounds around the house, such a planting is entirely appropriate. It gives a change from the typical all-evergreen planting, and makes a natural-looking finish for the base of a stone or a stucco house. Moreover, in the shade of northern and western exposures, are to be found conditions wholly suited to many of the rock garden and alpine plants. Concealed watering may easily be provided. (This subject is referred to further in Chapter IV, "Constructing the Rock Garden.")

One of the accompanying illustrations shows this type of rock gardening, suggested by a planting made by the illustrator of this book. His home is built upon a rock ledge, and he had the good sense to utilize this natural formation in the foundation planting, thus attaining an effect both beautiful and unusual instead of following the usual procedure of blasting out every visible piece of stone, at great expense, to achieve in the end only commonplace results.