Cassell's Popular Gardening #263765

A perfect rockery, be it large or small, should more resemble the sides than the floor of a quarry, exhausted or otherwise. The rocks should rise boldly — project here, recede there, and in places boldly assert themselves. For though the chief use of artificial rockeries is to afford picturesque-growing sites for beautiful plants and flowers, yet the rocky character of the base should be more prominently apparent here and there. The attempt to utilise each foot or yard of space, and to cover the whole of the rocks with flowers or foliage, is as great a mistake as the opposite one of having ten times more rock than vegetable covering. Regularity of form and of clothing is the ruin of the majority of artificial rockeries. Nature, by her various tiltings, upheavals, and depressions, varies to infinity the rocky foundations of the earth. And one of the chief charms of artificial rockeries con sists in choosing for our imitation specimens of her most erratic performances. And yet where any particular strata is chosen for imitation, in most cases sufficient variety may be obtained in the dips or tiltings of that particular formation, with out travelling far beyond it. But of course this is more applicable to rockeries of great extent, and such as are seldom attempted in this country.