In Europe, particularly in England, the rock garden is an established institution with a distinct following.
The English works on the subject alone form a considerable bibliography.
On this side of the Atlantic, the rock garden is so little understood that it is an almost unconsidered factor in the beautifying of the home grounds.
There are a few notable rock gardens in this country, all on large estates, and in more instances some excellent work has been done on a smaller and less complicated scale either by actual creation or by taking advantage of natural opportunities.
But for the most part America has confined its rock garden vision principally to the so−called “rockery.”
Now a rockery, with all the good intentions lying behind it, is not a rock garden. It is no more a rock garden than a line of cedars planted in an exact circle would be a wood.
A rockery is generally a lot of stones stuck in a pile of soil or, worse yet, a circular array of stones filled in with soil.
A rock garden, above all else, is not artificial; at least, so far as appearance goes. It is a garden with rocks.
The rocks may be few or many, they may have been disposed by nature or the hand of man; but always the effect is naturalistic, if not actually natural. The rock garden's one and only creed is nature.
Rock gardens are of so many legitimate—in other words, natural—types, that there is not the slightest excuse for a rockery.
Even that commonest of excuses, finding a use for stray stones, falls to the ground. Any close observer of nature is familiar with these types.
The natural rock gardens range from the patches of alpine plants above the timber line in high mountains down the lower slopes and through defiles to fields on or near sea level.
Not infrequently they come down to the very sea, while sweet waters commonly define and, what is better, are now and then incorporated in, them—here a pool, there a brook.
The bog, too, the heath and the desert, they take unto themselves, though perhaps only the nearer edge.
And does man, by ponderous effort, raise up massive masonry in orderly fashion; one day disorder comes and nature makes things look natural by another kind of rock garden.
Rome's Coliseum and the ruins of Kenilworth Castle are only two of the unnumbered examples of this.
