Is it ‘Rock Garden’, ‘Rockery’ or ‘Alpine Garden’?

The origins of rock used ornamentally in gardens can be traced back to China.  Inspirations for Chinese gardens of were the the natural landscape, Taoist and Buddhist love of nature, the mythological Immortals who dwelt amongst the peaks of the mythical Mount Kunlun in the far west, and the Isles of the Blessed  in the eastern sea.

Penglai  - one of the  Islands of the Immortals.

As early as the 2nd century BC,  Emperor Han Wudi (Liu Che, 141-86 BC) attempted to entice them to come to him. At the Jianzhang Palace (which was built in the Shanglin Garden 5 km north of today's downtown Xi'an) was built a garden - a lake in which stood rock constructions imitating  the four island peaks of the Immortals.

The Cloud Capped Peak in the Liu Yuan garden, Suzhou.

During the Song Dynasty (960-1279), Emperor Huizong (author of the famous Treatise on Tea) developed such a love of picturesque limestone rocks from lake Taihu, that trade was seriously interrupted when by royal decree the canals were closed in order that barges could transporting huge monoliths.  Such excess eventually led to his downfall.

The most famous of all kare niwa - Ryoan-ji, Kyoto.

Taoist and Buddhist influences travelled to Japan where they fused with the indigenous belief of Shinto.  Rock in the garden remained a key design element during the Heian period (795-1195) with its symmetrical Shinden architecture and Pure Lands gardens (a rare survivor is Bodoyo-in near Kyoto) and the subsequent Kamakura period (1185-1392) when asymmetrical Shoin architecture was complemented by the Zen inspired kare niwa or dry gardens.  

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In Britain, rock as an ornament in the garden did not become fashionable until the late 18th century by which time there were two schools of thought on rock arrangement. The 'naturalists' made rock features that imitated nature.  Humphry Repton, for example, created rugged rock features at Welbeck Abbey, Nottinghamshire  from 1789.  Contrastingly, the 'artists' saw rocks as ornaments and created artificial constructions to display agglomerations of rocks, geological specimens, fossils and shells, an approach that owed much to the baroque and rococo use of rock in fanciful creations such as grottoes.

The grotto at Villa Farnese, Italy - an inspiration for later British examples.

At the same time there was an increasing interest in growing plants we now call alpines.  These tricksy specimens were often grown in pots and plunged into gaps amongst the rocks. An early example of a rock garden as a setting for plants was Marianne's Garden at Hafod in Wales, designed and planted by Dr James Anderson from 1795-96.  The 2007 archeological evaluation makes for interesting reading.

Roackwork from Loudon's The Villa Gardener Companion (1850)

In 1834 John Claudius Loudon passed his judgement on the complex question of how rock in the garden should be defined.  The purpose of a rockery was for the cultivation of ‘rock plants' (alpines).   For example, Lamport Hall - see previous post.   'Rockwork' as an ornamental feature, Loudon declared, fell into three categories:

• Naturalistic (aka Repton)
• Contrast
• Scale Model

The contrast was  a very natural rock feature
 juxtaposed with a very unnatural feature such as a bedding display or hothouse.

Friar Park.  For scale there are two people just below and to the left of the pea

And the scale model was real natural scenery in miniature.  For example, in the 1820s Lady Broughton of  Hoole House, Cheshire, placed at end of the lawn placed a mini-Savoie and the valley of Chamonix.  Later in the century Sir Frank Crisp made a mini-Matterhorn at Friar Park, Berkshire - the former home of the Beatle, George Harrison.

The Garden Gnome

Elton John’s latest Oscar nods are a couple of songs from the animated feature Gnomeo & Juliet. Here’s the trailer, and plot summary.  Although what William S would think, is another matter.

Goofyness aside, I thought it was a good hook on which to hang the story of the garden gnome.  Thee little blighters have their origins in Celtic, Scandinavian and Germanic mythology, and the first record of gnomes being made as ornaments comes from the Black Forests of Germany.  Gnomes were male - there were originally no females, and their appearance with beard, jacket and pointy-hat is also directly descended from their Norse origins.

   © The "Gnome Rockery" at Lamport Hall by Chris Eaton

The first recorded examples of gnomes in a British garden comes from Lamport Hall, Northampton.  In 1848 Sir Charles Isham, 10th Baronet  (1819-1903) began to construct his rockery, upon which in the 1890s swarmed placed little china figures from Nuremberg.  Some were even  grouped to represent striking miners - perhaps inspired by the miners' strike of 1894.

The one and only Lampy - worth a million quid!

But why?  Dr Brent Ellliott offers an explanation in his authoritative Victorian Gardens (1986) ‘ the motive for their addition was religious. Isham was an ardent spiritualist, and, like Conan Doyle, extended his occultism to include a belief in the existence of fairies as spirits of nature. Not all the figures were miniature, though. Seated upon a rock there was a life-size female figure in terracotta, ‘invariably mistaken for an actual person', and probably representing the guardian spirit of the rockery; this was added after the death of Isham's wife (Emily), whom he had married the year he began the rockery.’

And what of the gnomes?  Apparently Isham’s daughter Vere hated them and had the rockery and its inhabitants covered with soil.  The subsequent restoration of the rockery, which reaches 7 m tall and looks a bit like a ruined castle,  unearthed one sole survivor of Britain’s first immigrant gnomes.  This rarity, known as ‘Lampy’ is on show int he house and insured for a million pounds! 

And one last piece of gnome tomfoolery.  Remember a few years back, the gnome became a political animal when it was revealed that the-then Prime Minister John Major's family had a gnome manufacturing business.