GENTIANA. 
blooms and the same prostrate stems as G. tubiflora, but the densely 
packed little leaves are oval, and the teeth of the calyx not pointed. 
G. verna, though, is the Gentian of gentians, engraven sadly on the 
conscience of every gardener. How then shall the glory of the upper 
alps be made to repeat itself in sheets of heaven fallen over our gardens 
in June? Quot gentianae, tot sententiae: give them masses of lime, says 
one ; give them no lime at all, says another ; a third recommends full 
sun; and yet a fourth’s Aunt Emily grew it for years in shade ; 
and while some prepare it a soil loose and spongy as possible, others 
ram down the loam with hammers to make it as hard as a threshing 
floor ; and many put it in sand, and many in peat, and many in loam ; 
and all sooner or later have plants that succeed ; and all, much sooner 
than later, have many more plants that don’t. The fact is, that after 
the first essential of perfect drainage is attained, the treatment of G. 
verna may reasonably vary within very wide ranges in different gardens 
and conditions. It is a species of remarkably accommodating temper 
at home, and flourishes in soils and circumstances most diverse, so 
that there need never be any dogmatic prophesying that G. verna will 
wholly refuse to tolerate such and such an apparently preposterous 
treatment. There are, however, three points to which the hitherto 
unsuccessful cultivator would always do well to address himself: in 
the first place, let the soil of your Gentians consist of one part fine leaf 
mould, to two or three times as much of the coarsest Red Hill sand (for 
countless other mixtures do well, but this excelleth them all) ; in the 
second, let their bed be on a sunny slope, and their soil lightened with 
chips, and the bed itself be resting on a firm bottom of the roughest 
drainage ; in the third, let it be copiously watered by underground 
pipes all through the summer ; and in the fourth, and most important 
perhaps of all, be sure that the clumps are not solitary, but with plenty 
of company. It is the most sociable of species, and in the Alps 
and in Ireland it makes tussocks of unbroken glory in turf where, a 
month later, it is wholly hidden by the rankest jungle of grass, dock 
and Astrantia and all the overweening herbs of the pastures, grown up 
over its head in a tall impenetrable tangle ; nor is it ever found—or 
very rarely—even at higher elevations, sitting solid and solitary ina 
tuft like G. aestiva, but always forming tissues in the dazzling carpet 
of the alpine herbage. This, then, is no recluse to set in melancholy if 
honourable isolation in the garden; it is too vigorous in growth, 
indeed, and likes neighbours too vigorous, to suit the choicest bed where 
the choicer smaller species live ; but in its own place it should have 
such company as Sazifraga oppositifolia, Antennaria dioica, Festuca 
ovina tenuifolia, thymes Alyssum Wulfenianum, and other lightly 
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