76 ALPINE FLOWERS [PART I. 



by it in an hour ; so is Cyananthus lobatus ; and these must be 

 shaded on every side but north. As a general rule, I find all 

 Himalayan alpine plants impatient of sunshine ; they may 

 endure it in their own home, where they live in an atmosphere 

 always saturated with wet. However, it is only the deep 

 recesses of the rockery towards the north which get no sun at 

 all, and plenty of things are quite contented on the north side 

 of the slope. For instance, I must grow Lithospermum pros- 

 tratum on stones or not at all. The white Erica carnea and 

 several such dwarfs are included in the same number. 



" As for bulbs, they may be ornamental enough at times, but 

 I find they do as well or better elsewhere. Their leaves are 

 untidy just at the time when the rockery ought to be most gay 

 and neat ; and watering in summer, which' other plants require, 

 is bad for them, so I have not included them in my list. 

 While speaking of watering, I may say that rockeries such as I 

 have described could not dispense with it in dry weather ; it 

 requires careful judgment ; and I often prefer to water the soil 

 holding the can close to the ground at the highest point of the 

 stones, and letting the water run down the slope to get to the 

 roots, rather than wet the plants themselves. Wet foliage and 

 flowers often get burnt up by sunshine. Weeding, carefully 

 done, is a necessity on rockeries, for weeds will come; but 

 plants which seed about freely are to be avoided, as they 

 greatly multiply the labour of weeding, and some of them are 

 hard to eradicate from among the stones. The Harebells, and 

 alpine Poppies, pretty as they are, must be excluded on this 

 account ; so must that weedy little plant, Saxif raga Cymbalaria, 

 which can be grown on any wall. The fewer weeds there are, 

 the more likely are seedlings of choice and rare plants to assert 

 themselves. For instance, Geranium argenteum grows in 

 crevices into which the seeds are shot when ripe, and where 

 plants could not be inserted, and keeps up the supply of this 

 elegant alpine. 



