I will certainly stop using the term "rock garden" for my gardens with rocks. And while those plants are wonderful and amazingly beautiful, I am glad I have dirt gardens where I can grow many other flower.

For the record, and as a point of clarification---
upon reflection, I am concerned that my comment here could be misinterpreted as me being "driven away" by Rick, which is not at all what I was trying to say.

dirtdorphins said:
True story Rick: your posts at NARGS talking about all the nice, but ignorant, "general public" type gardeners at ATP is what led me here and away from there likely to the delight of all the purists!

Rick introduced me to ATP--I had never seen or heard of ATP until I read about it in one of Rick's posts. Rick did not use the word ignorant to describe anyone, btw, and Rick did nothing whatsoever to drive me away from anywhere--here or there! He merely "led me here", as I said, for which I am very grateful, because this is a great place!
I have edited the comment to add Thank you

Furthermore, I want make clear that although I clearly have a whole bunch of strong and negative feelings about the conflation of "rock garden" with "alpine garden", I do NOT have a whole bunch of strong and negative feelings about Rick, personally or generally.

Obviously, I quoted Rick extensively to begin this thread -a polemic- because he provided the words that he did and I found them germane to quote.
It was my intention to dispute the conflation of "rock garden" with "alpine garden", seek discussion and clarity regarding what is and is perhaps not applicable content for the rock garden forum, figure out something to call my gardens with rocks, state my objections to imposed alpine limitations, etc.
However, in attacking the idea it appears as though I have attacked the man.
@Leftwood Rick, I am truly sorry. There are about a million other ways that I could have, should have introduced the controversial argument such that it would not appear to be about you and directed at you.

Last fall I attended a presentation which was illustrated with many pictures.
It was a rock garden, but had no flowers. It was predominantly alpine conifers.

Thank you for clarifying Dirt.

In the other thread I gave thumbs up and acorns to both you and Rick. I enjoy a civil spirited discussion. I learn from both view points.

I did not take the discussion to mean there were any negative feelings towards individuals. Just a sharing of ideas and thoughts about rock gardens and our various definitions of them.

Okay--thanks, that's good.
I still needed to clarify and apologize!

This is not a new discussion--
Here's an interesting link for the Rock Garden Quarterly; it has an article called "Define and Design: 75 years of Thoughts on the Craft of Rock Gardening" if anyone is interested to read what a bunch of other opinions on the subject are, or were, over the course of a relatively short time in the history of the discussion...
https://www.nargs.org/sites/de...

The discussion probably really took off in the early 1900's when the "father of rock gardening" aka the "high-priest" published two landmark books on the subject “My Rock Garden” (1907) and the monumental, two volume encyclopedia “English Rock Garden” (1919).
And, the disciples have been hashing it out ever since.

I guess I'm pretty much a heathen ;)

Thanks for the book reference. I have two copies of republications of peony books that are supposed to be the first definitive books for peony growers published. Really informative plus there are many references that sort of highlight the time it was written in (late 1800's). I will have to look up your references though I have several contemporary books even some with pictures from our own great Verna Pratt who is one of the founders and maintainers of the botanical garden's (Alaska) rock garden. The local rock garden society is offering a 'field' trip to Point Barrow, Alaska in July for seed collection and investigation. Can hardly wait.

Please take a camera with you, and tell us all about it next summer!

Oh for very sure!

Hi all
Len Lehman here - past chair of Alleghany Chapter, North American Rock Garden Society.
Most people use Reginald Farrers Book "The English Rock Garden" as a standard reference for what a rock garden is and is not.
He was most emphatic on how rocks were placed and his most famous quote involved haing rocks pointed upright. His quote was "A rock garden should not look like a mouse's graveyard!" Czeck rock gardeners consider rocks like a tiara with alpine plants as the jewel in the tiara. A modern trend is toward crevice gardens!

Hi Len!
So pleased to have you join in
I do so admire the Czech tiaras and some other crevice gardens I've seen.
Although some others, while plenty "crevicey" and displaying alpines well enough, don't evoke much of a tiara effect for me

I was wondering what else is in a "rock garden". First any kind of garden is an artifact of man. It is a cultural phenomenon. As such it will evolve, it may have styles, and may cause disruptions ( like the impressionists vs classicist painters a century and a half ago). So after thinking about the coining of rock gardens, just as one other form of concern, we may state that they tend to be more naturalistic rather than formal. That in some ways they try to emulate untouched nature; at least try to synthesize the spirit of rocky natural landscapes. I live next to mountains and I can "harvest" some boulders that are burried deep in my property. Yet not every stone is adequate. I can collect stones that are leftovers of road builders and they are very glad to see them removed since they may become driving hazards. Finally in my case the full "rock garden" comprises about two main flower borders plus two adjacent borders that frame the rock garden space. It is in the making an attempt to bring close those vast landscapes I can see in the distance. Each garden has its "genius loci" or spirit as already ancient Romans knew so well. I've got seven different gardens in my farm property each with its character. This late summer and following fall I'll be placing some of the low growing perennials, some heathers, some slow growing ornamental connifers, while I try to raise from seed fabulous little plants to grow amongst crevices and gravel. The project will take at least 5 years to mature. I expect flaws and probable mistakes trying to grow these little gems. As I see it, it is an excercise of downsizing the observer's attention while keeping up interest in the overall general "ambience". Obviously I'm trying to capture at least fleetingly, the beauty of those larger spaces. Also a reminder of my early youth tromping up the mountains trying to get pictures of those low growing gems. Thus summing up the controversy I feel that each of us rock gardeners will finally develop his own ( as with any other kind of human creation) and leave to the critics to what exact category it belongs to. I think that my only goal is to achieve harmony and beauty...not a very straightforward goal I admit...

Worthy goal Arturo!

Interesting you bring up art history! I was going to work that in when I decided to get around to taking up this topic again

This is where I live--less than a hundred feet above my elevation and less than a mile from my house:

Rocks--
naturally strewn everywhere, big ones, little ones, and in-between ones; stuff is growing all on its own--sagebrush, scrub trees, grasses, and some assortment of western perennial and annual weeds, er, I mean wildflowers, and the majority is not low growing.

I think the thing that irks me more than anything is that some guy wrote a book defining "natural" and prescribing rules for rock gardening that are rather limited, and now the phrase "garden with rocks" is brandished for everything else. Even that would be sort-of-okay with me if it wasn't such a derogatory phrase upholding the tradition.

Although, I must confess to my own hypocrisy:
When I moved into my house, the first thing I did was remove the "rock gardens" around the foundation. They were layers of black plastic garbage bags with a few holes cut in them for some struggling plants, covered with red lava rocks and Convolvulus arvensis.
As much as I want a broader definition, even I could not embrace that end of the spectrum. I don't hate on lava rocks--I just can't garden through plastic trash bags

Hi Dirt, what I share with you is those vast landscapes that tall mountains provide. Although the farm is nestled in a valley close to a very large glacial lake, where the town of Bariloche was established about 100 years ago on its southern central shore. The farm is 95% agricultural land although some parts have very shallow soils. That is where I plan and am developing my rock garden. When I first boulght the property with my father's aid almost thirty years ago, I never imagined the possibilities this place had. Of course I was at first focused on making out a living on the arable part. Now that enterprise ( organic vegetable growing) is handed over to my godson and I can endulge in the different gardening projects. Before acquiring this property, I worked for the Argentine National Parks Administration. This region is mostly protected under a million hectare contiguous conglomerate of national parks and reserves. So protected wilderness is everywhere. I'm slowly moving from conventional gardening to that of more naturalistic type. Far from being easy it is quite the opposite. Once man sets its foot into a given environment it fumbles with it and distorts it ( at the least). When I bought my place it was a non-stop Rosa eglanteria briar, product of free roaming cattle that love rose hips and spread the seedlings everywhere with their cow pads. So during these decades what started as making our place friendly, green and livable is now slowly moving towards a more environmental/landscape restoration . Thus this includes three ecosystem types that occurr naturally here: woodlands, rocky outcrop alpine meadows, and lowland praries/steppes. That is my present challenge: a rock/alpine garden, a woodland garden and a prarie garden. I still keep my more traditional garden types next to the farmhouse where I live.
My deceased wife was a professional painter from whom I learned a lot about art. Composition,form, texture ,contrast, color, rythm, balance, light, shade etc. We had the project of developing the same method as applied to gardening. Although she´s no longer here, I view these project as a tribute to our shared common interests.Finally what I managed to recognize is that ultimate goal of harmony and beauty only becomes viable if one understands the spirit of the place as imbricate levels of beauty that start from the general landscape and gradually downsized into the different gardens and even to the specific plants placed consciously in a particular spot. That is also the case with rocks, stones large or small. What nature did by strewing boulders around somehow didn't occurr haphazardly but instead were moved about by glaciars, volcanoes, rivers or wind. These natural geological forces do not play in just anyway. Watching how they are placed in nature is what allows us to copy them into our articificial natural looking rock gardens.
I sense the controversy issue dissapears when we look at the broad picture of what gardening means to us now ( this present year). Rock gardens are perhaps not more than a century old ( compared to rose gardens at Malmaison). The whole concept of pleasure gardens developed as a consequence of post industrial world wide extensive social well being also with a need of recovering a much more direct involvement with the land and now with preservation of biodiversity and mitigation of world man made climate change. I think us gardeners have a growing role to play in all of this as well.

Addendum : Viewing various pics from different arboreta perhaps what I can see in common apart from ubiquitous rocks ( though not always) is the choice of plants. It seems that they are restricted to those that haven't ( yet...) been domesticated heavily. Petunias grow wild in central Argentina. They could be included in a warm rock garden. However their highly hybridized relatives beautifully hanging in baskets somehow seem out of place... Just food for thought.

Ah yes, the choice of plants...the choice of rocks...

It is not so much a controversy for me as it is a point of contention.
I have been gardening with rocks my whole life because they are so ubiquitous in my world--and I like them, granted, some more than others. In fact, I have quite a collection of 'special' rocks and I am more than a little heartbroken about having to leave behind many special rocks in my former gardens--more so even than some of my special plants because, for the most part, plants can be propagated and replaced whereas many rocks are truly one of a kind and irreplaceable.

The trouble is that I failed to consult the great oracle for the accepted divine guidance regarding rock gardens, initially.
I only recently learned that I was supposed to have recreated a natural likeness of the Alps above the treeline. Holy cow--how was I supposed to know that? I have never been to the Alps--never even occurred to me, didn't have a category to even begin thinking about such a preposterous notion!

I don't know--maybe "most people" seek codified gardening instruction and advice when they start and I am just ignorant.
Certainly, the majority of people in-the-know or at least those who grow alpines and some permitted, other declared-suitable plants (low growing: wildflowers, native perennials, bulbs, rare and/or exotic treasures, etc.,) do accept Farrer's basic tenants as a reference for what a rock garden is and is not. But, the evidence for what I have seen around me all these years clearly supports the fact that "most people" do not grow alpines and other suitable plants in general and garden with rocks and plants as if they have never consulted the reference. For that reason I don't feel so alone in my ignorance, but, I am miffed at the discovery that all these creations featuring plants and rocks that we call rock gardens--around here anyway--are not rock gardens, but, instead some kind of vulgar abomination of an ideal standard that I, for one, did not know that I was held to.
I mean, I never got the memo and I created multiple rock gardens in three different states before I ever read this
http://www.crozetgazette.com/2...
or this
http://sidestreet.info/rocks.h...
for example,
and any number of others I could link.

Fortunately though, it's okay--I broke the social contract for artistic conformance so long ago I really do have creative license
I truly admire and would love to have any number of the fantastic rock gardens I have seen since I began viewing real rock gardens on the internet. I also really like some of the so-called 'bad' ones, like this one
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2...

As it is though, I have the abominations that I have created and I quite like them too
I have never had the goal to recreate a natural mountain top scene or restore my native habitat (if I want to look at sagebrush and rabbit brush and dodge rattlesnakes I don't have to go far). I went with the acknowledgement that whatever I do with islands in the lawn and around the edges or whatever is already so defiant there is no point in attempting to make it look like it was here first and that then I decided to plant lawn around it (who in their right mind would do that?). Instead my intents are always just to create something that I think is cool in the moment, something I've never seen before but feel like trying, and to grow a variety of plants to stagger the show from spring thaw to first freeze, for me! and so that the bees always have something good to eat.

Our snow just melted, and the run-o-the-mill, regular old C. chrysanthus don't seem out of place for me or the early bees
although I did acquire a ridiculously $ single corm, fancy, special crocus just for fun last year. Still waiting on that to bloom, and I hope the bees like it too!

Now while I face placing my rocks in their new setting I wonder what I'm trying to accomplish in this new thematic garden . The area is surrounded by evergreen conifers and is like a room about 25yds wide by 30 yds deep with five separate borders. It is placed on a northwise looking incline , along the main gravel driveway.;( btw here in the south north means towards the sun) . The back border has two paper bark birches providing dappled shade. Under these thrive Alstroemerias . The rest of the borders are in full sun. The area was originally an internal road roundabout that is being renovated into a rock garden...I'll keep adding boulders...which I enjoy gathering five min away from the side of the road embankments...slowly over the course of even 5 years, the place will keep developing in structure and slow growing perennials. Some will be of seeds that I've yet to receive, sow germinate, successfuly grow the plants and eventually place inside the borders. Perhaps what I'll choose as a criterion of grouping is more of ecotype. One of the beds with rocks will be closer to a humid alpine rockery with plants that have similar water requirements, the other on the drier side closer to steppe, while the third for plants that require acidic soils ( i.e heathers) while the remainder for shade loving plants. Meanwhile since the place is prepared I thought of spring bulbs such as Muscari, Ornithogallum, of which I have plenty supply . There are no specialized rock garden nurseries here. So imagining what will grow each season is a challenge in itself. I never had a chance of reading R. Farrar books; I don't approach gardening from a conceptual way, I do accept constraints given by terrain, climate and growth requirements of the specific plants and group them accoordingly; also the constraint of getting hold of the specific plants themselves. Nevertheless I still visualize this beautiful garden with color, texture, contrast, shape and proportion and inmense opportunities of joy, creating and caring for each of these very special specimens. I really don't care if it doesn't fit into any given set of garden design category. I simply want to share my life with those plants since they provide me so much happiness. I'll try to place each other in such a way that each will be enhanced and also contribute to general harmony. Sometimes they'll be misplaced, others will have outnumbered or overgrown . They will have to be culled. Others replaced. Year after year, always improving horticulturally and aesthetically.I'm already looking out for species from the Caucasus and the Pontic mountains in Anatolia, my ancestral homeland. Others from mountain regions of the world and some native. What I admit is the incredible enthusiasm and stimulus provided by rock gardening Also the breadth of study and research in such staggering diversity. That in itself will keep me busy in contentment...until I depart...
I was fortunate in life in having travelled just a bit both the New World and also the Old World ( Europe). At that time I was professionally engaged in national parks and nature conservation. Comparing these I was surprised what they meant for each. The latter just had no untouched regions altogether! Being a New World person, conceptual restraints amd definitions somehow stiffle necessary my freedom of choice. Our visions really differ. So when I watch in Internet "naturalistic" however European gardens, what immediately comes to my mind our very different sense of space in these so different worlds. However I still learn from both .Then of course there are those who might want to transpose say an English cottage garden into the middle of Patagonia, which may well prove an impossible pursuit...
PS. all of these issues are part of MY gardens...because they are the kind of issues I include when I create , tend ,enjoy or show my gardens

ha--That's sign language for 'that sounds perfectly wonderful and divine to me'
Please do share your journey with us Arturo
I know you will acquire some great plants and make magic

What an interesting post all. Thank you.

I'm winter sowing my first batch of rock gardens plants. I couldn't resist the temptation of ordering seeds and am amazed by the diversity of germination techniques required to get them started. Now I have snow standing outdoors ,but plenty to be achieved inside. As soon as I get some germination news, I'll post my first batch of seedlings and also the first bed at the bare soil stage. If gardening is about patience then rock gardening is its epitome!