40 ALPINE FLOWERS [PART I 



WALL PLANTS FROM SEED. 



A good way to establish rock plants on walls is by seed. The 

 Cheddar Pink, for example, grows on walls at Oxford much 

 better than on the level ground, on which it often dies. A few 

 seeds of this plant, sown in a mossy or earthy chink, or even 

 covered with a little fine soil, would soon take root and grow, 

 living, moreover, for years in a healthy state. So it is with 

 most of the plants enumerated ; the seedling roots vigorously 

 into the chinks, and gets a hold which it rarely relaxes. But of 

 some plants seeds are not to be had, and therefore it will be 

 often necessary to use plants. In all cases, young plants should 

 be selected, and as they will have been used to growing in 

 fertile ground, or good soil in pots, and have all their little 

 feeding roots compactly gathered up near the surface, they 

 must be placed in a chink with a little moist soil, which will 

 enable them to exist until they have struck root into the 

 interstices of the wall. In this way several interesting species 

 of Ferns are established, and also the silvery Eockfoils, and the 

 appearance of the starry rosettes of these little rock plants (the 

 kinds with incrusted leaves, like S. longifolia and S. lingulata) 

 growing flat against the wall is strikingly beautiful. 



While few have ruins and walls on which to grow alpine 

 plants, all may succeed with many kinds by building a rough 

 stone wall, and packing the intervals as firmly as possible with 

 soil. A host of brilliant plants may be thus grown with little 

 attention, the materials of the wall affording precisely the 

 conditions required by the plants. To many species the wall 

 would prove a more congenial home than any but the best 

 constructed rock-garden. In very moist places, natives of wet 

 rocks, and trailing plants like the Linnaea, might be interspersed 

 here and there among the other alpines ; in dry ones it would 

 be desirable to plant chiefly the Saxifrages, Sedums, small 

 Campanulas, Linarias, and plants that, even in hotter countries 

 than ours, find a home on the sunniest and barest crags. 

 The chief care in the management of this wall of alpine 

 flowers would be in preventing weeds or coarse plants 



