ALPINE PLANTS FOR ROCK GARDENS 31 



to save and sow the fresh seed than to keep on buying plants. 

 After a couple of years, one could grow a few plants in reserve, 

 solely for the purpose of getting seed from them. 



A good deal of leaf mould or humus helps seed to germinate, 

 as it keeps the soil open and porous. 



Advantages over England. 



We have all heard and read a great deal about the enormous 

 advantages of gardening in England. After gardening there for 

 ten summers, I have come to the conclusion that if the same 

 amount of skill and time were spent here as is spent in England on 

 gardens, we should have very nearly as much garden beauty as 

 they have. Not the same beauty of spreading lawns and hedges 

 of holly and yew, but wonderful flowering trees and shrubs, which 

 either cannot be grown in Europe, or present miserable objects 

 with very few flowers in English gardens. Our glorious laurel I 

 have seen there languishing in pots, and taking into consideration 

 its many and wonderful beauties, there is surely no European 

 shrub to compare with it. Our native rhododendrons and azaleas 

 are also plants of incomparable garden value. In England, beds 

 of peaty soil are made, in which these plants, with some of our 

 andromedas, huckleberries, and lilies, are grown, and as there is 

 difficulty about making them thrive, they are very greatly admired. 

 Here, on the contrary, people worry over box, English ivy, tender 

 retinosporas, and other European varieties, instead of giving a 

 proper place and setting to our own plants. 



From lack of knowledge and imagination, European plants and 

 methods have been used in this totally different climate with 

 deplorable results, and vice versa, American plants abroad are 

 often far from being beautiful. 



But, if the choice of suitable plants has a great deal to do with 

 poor gardens in America, the lack of trained helpers in gardens 

 has a still more unfortunate effect. A trained gardener gets five or 

 six times the wages here that he is accustomed to receive abroad. 

 And then, who does he have to help him? Instead of under-gar- 

 deners, hoping to rise to be heads in their turn, and trained in 



