ALPINE PLANTS FOR THE ROCK GARDEN. 

 By Mrs. L. S. Chanler, Tuxedo Park, N. Y. 



Delivered before the Society, with stereopticon illustrations, June 2, 1917. 



Alpine plants are a source of endless interest and pleasure to 

 all who know them. The object of what I have to say today is 

 to try and increase your interest in them, be it ever so little. Un- 

 doubtedly, many of you who are devoted gardeners have never 

 felt any enthusiasm for alpines and have perhaps even suspected 

 them of being a foolish fad. That is a normal state for those who 

 do not know these plants. I felt that way myself not many years 

 ago and used to ask my English friends not to show me their rock 

 gardens, as I did not understand them. 



It is certain that anyone who commences to grow alpines never 

 gives them up. Their charms and fascinations are endless, and 

 though their flowers are usually to be seen only in the spring their 

 growth of foliage rosettes covered with fat buds in many varieties, 

 or laced over with exquisite white markings, as in the encrusted 

 saxifrages, is most lovely at all seasons, and most alpines are ever- 

 green. 



About the middle of September, when the great heat is over, 

 these plants like many evergreens put out new shoots and take 

 on an altogether spruce and lively air. Also, many of them bloom 

 again, not with the rich profusion of early summer, but the few 

 late flowers give all the more pleasure because of being rare. A 

 wonderful lace-like plant which blooms from May to December is 

 Asperula cynanchina. You see it here draping these rocks in late 

 October. Here is a closer view of it, and later you will see it 

 blooming in early summer. It has all the soft, foamy effect of 

 gypsophila but not gypsophila's bad habit of blooming only once. 

 Here is Sedum Sieboldii, also in October. It is a lovely gray and 

 pink plant, and the flowers last a long time. 



Gardeners have sometimes objected that our summers are too 



17 



