Trend started by middle-class Victorians

ROCKERIES became popular during the Victorian era.

Increasing numbers of the middleclasses began mountaineering and many stumbled across extraordinary plants in the Alps and other mountain ranges. They brought these Alpine plants home and decided to build ‘mini-Alps’ with stones in their gardens to display them.

In the 1840s, rockeries could often include broken porcelain plates and bricks, as well as flint.

Kew’s original rock garden, built in 1882, was intended to represent a stream bed in the Pyrenees.