14. Rock Garden

Narrator:

The Rock Garden was Bowles’ favourite place to spend time, as Bryan Hewitt explains:

Bryan Hewitt:

The rock garden, … was an area he looked after himself personally. He knew it intimately and he knew even when he was blind he could still take you to where he knew a plant would be growing and he’d know what state of growth it would be in as well. … When the weather was good he’d be out there until four o’clock; and that’s why he had his ashes scattered in the rock garden, because it was his favourite part of the garden.

Narrator:

Bowles started work on the Rock Garden when he was in his early 20s. It was his first venture into garden design. Later, he wrote about it.

Voice of Bowles:

It is a Rock Garden but by no means an alpine garden, for though alpine plants have a first choice of place I have always been ready to plant any bush or even tree in it.