158 ALPINE FLOWERS AND GARDENS 



cannot but imagine it a likely playground for 

 mountain sprites and fairies. 



The Linnea (granite ; altitude about 5,300 ft.). 



Just outside, and dominating the quaint little 

 village of Bourg St. Pierre the last village upon 

 the road to the Grand St. Bernard stands the 

 oldest of the gardens in the Swiss Alps : La Linnea. 

 Founded in 1889 with M. Henry Correvon as 

 director, it now affords shelter to some 3,000 

 different kinds of plants, of which some 2,000 

 appear to be perfectly happy and flourishing. Once 

 again the Iceland Poppy has found for itself a con- 

 genial home a home which it shares with the 

 little Papaver alpina, of finer foliage and frailer 

 blossom. But the garden has really no need to 

 borrow the brilliance of these two Poppies at all 

 events, not at the end of July and beginning of 

 August : for at that season its wealth is super- 

 abundant. Even along the shady paths which 

 wind up about its northern side there is no lack of 

 colour-interest ; even here, in the shade, plants 

 indigenous to the site, such as the rich madder-red 

 Lilium Martagon, the warm-brown Gentian (G-. 

 purpurea) and its creamy relative, Gr. punctata, the 

 rosy Adenostyles and the stately mauve Mulgedium, 



