248 THE ALPINE FLORA 



splendid work, the writer asked, as he admired the out- 

 lines and drank in the refreshing air, Whence, whither 

 had he come, to enjoy this truly alpine scene? Had he 

 really crossed the whole of France, the Channel and the 

 south-east of England? In spirit he was carried to the 

 High Alps. 



This is the grand, master style; the only way, that is 

 truly artistic, of making an alpine garden. First and above 

 all, the scene should calm the mind and set it in the pre- 

 sence of the true spirit of the hills, not of that bastard 

 mockery which is born of the phantasies of certain land- 

 scapists. It is not sufficient to introduce the mere pain- 

 ting, that is to say, the brilliant flora of the heights; the 

 framework also must be true a home-like setting on a 

 mother alp, a sense of enfolding nature, mountain nature, 

 in her most majestic and pictorial form, where water-worn 

 and frost-splintered masses are flung around in grand and 

 balanced negligence. Embed the plants in moss and 

 mountain grasses; group them cunningly in a harmo- 

 nious, everblending symphony of many-coloured clus- 

 ters, without a crude tone to offend the eye; throw a 

 rustic bridge across a stream that murmurs between rocky 

 walls, whose huge blocks, fretted by the waters and the 

 rust of ages, are spread along the bank or on some up- 

 land pasture; give to this pasture a soil that leaves the 

 herbage dwarf and smooth, enamel it with alpine flowers, 

 and spare it from the scythe; arrange some little masses 

 here and there, whose native outcrop alternates with the 

 grander architecture of the framework, that gives law and 

 being to the whole; set in these separate rockeries the 

 flora of peak and of field, of wood and of cliff with due 

 regard for the particular needs of each such is something 

 of the task before the designer of an alpine garden and 

 the landscape builder, who would wish his work to be an 

 artistic one and natural. 



