CHAPTER X. 



ALPINE FLOWER- ROCK- AND WALL GARDENS. 



IT was a common idea that the exquisite flowers of alpine plants 

 could not be grown in gardens in lowland regions, and it was not con- 

 fined to the public, but propagated by writers whenever they have had 

 to figure or describe alpine flowers. So far from its being true, how- 

 ever, there are but few alpine flowers that ever cheered the traveller's 

 eye that cannot be grown in these islands. 



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 contend- 

 ing 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, in- 

 habited 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 



