An elite landscape garden was built from moss-covered rock blasted from a wild cliff

Evidence

Peter, the rock designer, would select the sectors of the cliff which were most beautiful, a place where a quartz vein ran through the schist and the mosses were especially well placed. The stonecutters would then carefully calculate the position for the precision charges and blow the rock off the cliff face. Lesser men then hoisted the rock with the crane and placed it on a pallet where it was wrapped in moist burlap to protect the precious mosses. I suddenly understood that the lovely rocks on the terrace owed nothing to applications of buttermilk. I felt my hands grow clammy. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 548

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Connects to ‘Grafting & Growth: On Trees as Infrastructure’ and the broader theme of expensive artifice masquerading as nature; the owner spent fortunes excavating wild moss-covered rock while wanting spontaneous moss between his pavers killed.
• XREF: Echoes the Osprey Wilds thread on reading disturbance history from present landscape — the terrace’s ‘aged a century in twelve months’ landscape is a deliberate forgery of ecological time. — connects to: Human-built structures replicate scarce natural cliff habitats for mosses — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 385; A moss garden that needs wild harvesting is not self-sustaining — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 514

Broader Connections

• Human-built structures replicate scarce natural cliff habitats for mosses #exemplifies (0.85) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 385
• A moss garden that needs wild harvesting is not self-sustaining #complicates (0.75) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 514