ALPINE FLOWERS 249 



like effects; on the rock roses, or helianthemums, for a wide range 

 of colour; on the sun roses or cistuses for large individual blooms; 

 on gentians for blues; on primroses for yellows and crimsons; on 

 the purple rock-cress, or aubrietia, for big carpets of bloom cheaply 

 raised from seed; and on the pinks for fragrance. 



All of these we can grow on a good rockery, but I believe it is 

 folly for us to try to get great landscape or garden effects with any 

 of these plants, save pinks. I am confident that we shall get 

 equally gorgeous effects, but with a different set of plants. And 

 I know we have done wrong in making a big fuss about the few 

 plants which we cannot grow as well as England, instead of trying 

 to see how we can get just as big effects that shall be distinctly 

 American. 



BIG EFFECTS WE CAN HAVE 



One way in which we can get immense carpets of flowers in 

 ordinary gardens without rocks, as well as on great estates that 

 have plenty of rocky land, is to concentrate on rock plants that are very 

 easily raised from seed. Here is a list that we can get from our own 

 seedsmen, and these kinds are so easy to grow that most of them 

 will bloom the first year, if started in a frame in March. Prac- 

 tically all can be had cheaply by the ounce and I hope that some 

 of our readers will give them a thorough trial now for next 

 season's bloom. 



Those marked * are the only ones that actually grow upon the 

 Alps, so far as I know, but in the rest of this article I shall pay no 

 attention to such distinctions, because the Alps do not have a 

 monopoly of floral beauty by any means. Indeed, the whole spirit 

 of alpine gardening is cosmopolitan. The rockery is a beautiful 

 device that enables us to grow plants from Arctic and Antarctic 

 lowlands, from the highest mountains of the tropics and from our 



