160 FLOWER-FIELDS OF ALPINE SWITZERLAND 



be a much simpler matter than the building and 

 tending of rockworks (though, of course, the ideal 

 should be for the field to companion or environ the 

 rockery). It would be less complicated, and it 

 would not entail such a variety of specialist know- 

 ledge. Many of a kind, and each kind robust and, 

 for the most part, ordinary — that should be the 

 rule among the plants for our Alpine meadow. 

 Fractious, exigent rarities would naturally not be 

 welcome. Fields are perhaps loveliest when planned 

 upon broad lines. There is no need to make 

 extraordinary efforts to find sports and forms ; no 

 need to do more than Nature does — here and there 

 a white or porcelain-grey Campanula rhomboidalis, 

 here and there a pale-pink Geranium sylvaticum, 

 here and there a white Salvia prrdensis, here and 

 there a white Colchicum autumn ale. Forms and 

 sports and vagaries are all very well, but in these 

 meadows it is the type-plant which counts. A 

 field of Salvia, Campanula, and Geranium is blue 

 and mauve ; that is the general effect, and varia- 

 tion from it rarely counts in the colour-scheme. 

 Eccentricity we may keep for the proud eminence 

 of our rockworks. 



If it is not possible to transplant to the plains 



