ALPINE FLOWERS 253 



And please remember that there is no longer any excuse for robbing 

 nature of these lovely plants. Every one of them can now be 

 secured from nurseries or in the form of seed. 



SUMMER EFFECTS ANY ONE CAN HAVE 



But to come back to big displays with rock plants that any 

 one can have, I believe that we shall make a great and peculiarly 

 American success by emphasizing summer effects. In England, 

 the rock garden is a spring garden. True, there are lovely bits of 

 colour in it all summer and autumn, but the whole thing is a blaze 

 of colour only in spring. In America, summer is the national play 

 time. Our great annual exodus to the country does not come 

 until hot weather, or say June; and our great vacation month 

 is August. What we seek then is coolness, comfort, rest. 



Now the coolest colours are white, green, gray, and blue. 

 The hottest are red, orange, and purple. So I think we should 

 avoid big masses of scarlet sage, red cannas, cerise geraniums, 

 and other things that make us feel the heat, and plan to have 

 broad sheets of dainty little white flowers like snow in summer, 

 white tufted pansies, fragrant pinks, sweet woodruff, white rock- 

 cress, and the common alyssum, which, though annual, sows its 

 own seed. 



The question of greenery on the rocks in summer is highly 

 important and peculiar. The great fault of rockeries everywhere 

 is that they show more rocks than vegetation, and that is why 

 they look hard and hot in summer. But if there is too much 

 vegetation the rockery will look coarse and weedy. Every thing 

 in the rock garden must be daintier than in any other kind of 

 gardening. We want no tall bushes or perennials, because we do 

 not wish luxuriance of height, but of spread. So I believe we shall 



