The English Rock Garden, Vol. 1 (Classic Reprint) - Reginald Farrer

Excerpt from The English Rock Garden, Vol. 1
Upon the knowledge that the treasures we possess are but a tithe of those that we may some day come to have. And, since cata logues each year are helping us to fill these voids, it became obvious that such a book as this, to have more than ephemeral value, must run ahead of collectors, and give authoritative notes, not only on all species that are grown, but also on all such as ought to be. In other words, I set myself to peruse my authorities, not only with a view to dealing fairly by the plants we know, but also to anticipating many catalogues as yet unborn, by discovering, through a veil of cumbrous Latin, any promise of beauty in species that we do not possess. So that in future, when confronted with the offer of a beautiful unknown, collectors may be able to refer to this volume, there to ascertain whether indeed it be beautiful or no. That such a guide is complete, or ever can be, I should, of course, be the last to claim: at the same time it cannot but be that this book will be able to make accessible a large amount of information on plants and matter hitherto unknown or buried in learned works of difficult attainment and digestion. But if you were to compile a full list of all plants possible for the rock garden, whether good or bad, no library would hold the number cf volumes to which such a work would run. Therefore (seeing that I have already exceeded the space allotted me by exactly the same amount again) my work has had to be severely selective, and my own personal taste must be held responsible for many omissions; while yet others will have been due to oversight, or to the inability of a botanical diagnosis to give any fair notion of the beauty belonging to the plant it frigidly describes.
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