Booker Prize winner Margaret Atwood wrote that the stones are flowers too in the rock garden and that's a great way to look at these horticultural geological features.
Fashionable in the 1970s, the rock garden's place in history and society is reassessed by Harland.
Rock from the Tower of London was used for an early (18th century) rock garden at Chelsea Physic Garden. Naturally, central Europe was the nursery for alpine rock gardens, but RHS shows picked up on them by the 1890s and the inevitable committee was formed in 1936. In the UK, East Lambrook. Kew (550 tonnes of Sussex sandstone 1910-12), RBGE, Wisley and Leonardslee are among those that get a mention as the trend took off in late Victorian times.
Rococo gardens and grottoes were forms of rock gardens, which became a miniature version of nature. Sinks and troughs followed, with artificial hypertufa and alpine houses advancing the genre.
After the 1970s heyday, the writer Alfred Wainwright backed a peat-ban style campaign to stop limestone being taken from the moors. Taking wild plants became frowned upon, and often illegal, too. Rock gardens went out of fashion, seen as kitsch, dated and fussy wthout the wow factor of smoother landscaping and bigger and bolder plant and tree choices.
A generation later, rock gardens have been rehabilitated. as places to preserve plant heritage, as nostalgic throwbacks and because they can be low maintenance, good for wildlife, children and therapy and possibly made from greener recycled materials, with the stones telling a new story for the 21st century.
