



CHAPTER X. 



ALPINE FLOWER, ROCK, AND WALL GARDENS. 



ALPINE plants grow naturally on high mountains, whether they 

 spring from sub-tropical plains or green northern pastures. Above 

 the cultivated land these flowers begin to occur on moorland and in 

 the fringes of the hill woods ; they are seen in multitudes in the 

 broad pastures with which many mountains are robed, enamelling 

 their green, and where neither grass nor tall herbs exist ; where 

 mountains are crumbled into slopes of shattered rock by the con- 

 tending forces of heat and cold ; even there, amidst the glaciers, 

 they spring from the ruined ground, as if the earth-mother had sent 

 up her loveliest children to plead with the spirits of destruction. 



Alpine plants fringe the fields of snow and ice of the mountains, 

 and at such elevations often have scarcely time to flower before 

 they are again buried deep in snow. Enormous areas of the earth, 

 inhabited by alpine plants, are every year covered by a deep bed of 

 snow, and where tree or shrub cannot live from the intense cold a 

 deep mass of down-like snow falls upon alpine plants, like a great 

 cloud-borne quilt, under which they rest safe from alternations of frost 

 and biting winds with moist and spring-like days as in our green 

 winters. 



But these conditions are not always essential for their growth, in 

 a cool, northern country like ours. The reason that alpine plants 

 abound in high regions is because no taller vegetation can exist 



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