OF OUR ENTHUSIASM FOR "ALPINES" 9 



"... think of all 

 The suns that go to make one speedwell blue."" 



To us a tiny chalet is quite well placed amid 

 stupendous clifts and huge, tumbled boulders, and 

 is fit example to follow, if only we are able to do 

 so. In Alpine gardening we feel no need to study 

 the size of our rocks in relation to oiu* summer- 

 house, or place them so that they express some 

 high philosophic or mystic principle. We have no 

 cult beyond Nature's own cult in this matter. 

 We see, and we are content to see, that Nature 

 has no nice plan and yet is invariably admirable ; 

 we see, and we are content to see, that if man, as 

 in Switzerland, chooses to plant his insignificant 

 dwelling in the midst of great, disorderly rocks 

 and crowded acres of brilliant blossoms, it is 

 romantic garden enough and worthy of as close 

 imitation as possible. 



With the Japanese, gardening is perhaps more 

 a deeply aesthetic culture than it is the culture of 

 plants. Where we are bald, unemotional, " scienti- 

 fic " gardeners, they will soar high into the clouds 

 of philosophic mysticism. Truer children of the 

 Cosmos than we Western materialists, they walk 

 in their gardens as in some religious rite. We, too, 

 no doubt, are often dreamers ; we, too, are often 



