ROCK GARDENS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 26 June 1924, Page 2

ROCK GARDENS

(To the Editor j

Sir, —A letter appeared recently in your paper suggesting that the grassy slopes of Church Hiil facing Trafalgar (Street should be turned into rockeries. The letter was possibly a feeler to test public opinion, but nothing further ciune of it. Now, however, with the formation of a Hock Garden Society the menace to one of the city’s beauty spots is grave. 1 think that most people will agree with me when I say that to destroy these beautiful terraces would be an act of vandalism. The peacefulness that is of our holy places is ever associated in our mind's with Sun and shade , Decked lawns. What then could be H I more fitting foundation for the Cathedral which rises above them? What- more at variance with this ideal than a jumble of splintered stones? Rock gardens iil their place and when skilfully built are beautiful, but the art of rockery building appears to be as difficult as that of portraiture. Hundreds of ar- ' fists can paint a portrait, but bow few In perfect one? So with rock gardens. ) A rockery is not merely a cartload of j jagged stones set on edge in the earth. To watch a skilled gardener at work one would fancy rockery building a simple matter: stone after stone is embedded apparently at random, small, medium sized, and others so large as to be handled only with difficulty, but gradually out of the seeming haphazard work a perfectly balanced and harmonious whole is evolved. Surrounding the pedestal of the war memorial is a plot of splintered stones more suggestive of the Dolomite mountains in .mi mature than a rockery. Perhaps it. isn’t a rockery. Possibly it is symbolic of the difficulties surmounted by our troops before attaining to their pinnacle of fame! Which ever it be, let the public, ask themselves which they would prefer : Church Hill as it is—a well nigh perfectly planned shrubbery with smooth grassy slopes, or a horror of jagged rock as that surrounding the memorial. Should however, the City Fathers decide to allow the construction of rockeries on Church Hill or elsewhere let them act circumspectly, and in selecting the master craftsman let them exercise as much care as would be exercised in the selection of an architect for the Cathedral itself I note in vour columns that Mr Forster has already collected a sum of monev towards the building of a rockery at Collingwood Bridge. Has the Council sanctioned the scheme? The Society was only formed last Saturday: they can’t have had time! Ido not doubt but that Mr Forster is actuated by the best of intentions, but surely, it is not permitted to any society or individual to undertake such a work on their own initiative. The beautifying of vour already beautiful city should be considered as a whole and entrusted to n body.of experts; to leave it to individual enterprise is surely to court disaster. The Nelson Bowling Club has donewell to attempt to popularize rockery building, and in throwing open their grounds for public inspection, but without wishimr in the slightest degree to disparage their rockeries, I would like 1o remark that, in my opinion, their builders have a lot to learn before being entrusted with (lie erection of a rockery on such a site ns_ Church Hill. C am,’ etc., VISITOR.