GENTIANA. 
more. Then lay a pipe throughout, connected with a tap; let the 
pipe be pierced on either side (or perhaps, better still, along the under- 
side only) with a few very small holes (through the merest pin-prick 
water escapes in fountains unbelievable, and, if your holes are too large 
and frequent, all your garden will be a bubbling swamp). We now 
put in all the rest of the mixture, flush with the ground ; and when it 
has settled we respectfully insert our Gentians, the last step being 
to turn on the tap so that water flows beneath their feet all through 
the summer. So they will immediately be appeased, and go ahead 
through the season, even the most difficult, until with the approach 
of autumn they begin to ask for rest, And now the treatment must be 
quite reversed ; off goes the water, and not only that, but if you want 
thoroughly to please the Gentians, and invest a little extra trouble in 
the certainty of their cent. per cent. return next season in the way of 
flower, the whole bed should be roofed over with glass or gorse, and kept 
safe for the winter, ridiculous as such a precaution may seem, in plants 
that look so glossily winter-proof, and devoid of perilous fluffs. Yet 
it is not to be told how even one pane of glass over one clump will 
gratify G. verna or G. bavarica ; the sufficiently enthusiastic have been 
known to subsist entirely through the summer on glass-potted tongues 
and shrimps, in order that the receptacles of these delicacies should 
afford a sufficient number of roofs to shelter all their Gentians in winter. 
Nor must more precautions be neglected : in the first place, top-dress 
them all in spring with coarse sand well silted down between the 
shoots : and in the second, more important still, do not forget, in the 
beginning, to give your Gentians company ; do not plant them tuft by 
tuft, neatly, at respectable distances from each other, as if you were 
bedding out stocks, and leaving them room to develop. Gentians, if 
they hate being crowded, also hate being left alone with their roots 
waving through the wide earth in unrelieved solitude.* G. verna, 
indeed, affects the roughest of the alpine turf in nature, and the 
splendid clumps that are imported from Ireland bear painful 
witness to its unrefined fondness for company ; for every kind of ram- 
pageous grass and willow and Ladies-finger and Ladies-bedstraw 
develops in no time from the heart of the Gentian, and the bed is filled 
in a week with weeds. But even if so coarse and dangerous a taste as 
this be not indulged, yet company the plant must have, for even the 
high-alpine species, sitting lonely in round tufts among the barren 
stones, are grateful in the garden for a little fine society to 
E * Gentians are also more or less inclined to associate, for mutual benefit, with a 
microscopic root-fungus ; but really, in our present state of knowledge, few gardeners can 
be expected to fuss profitably with fungi. 
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