48 ALPINE FLOWERS [PART I. 



Heaths of our own land to the Rhododendrons of the European 

 and other alpine regions. Therefore, it is right in all ways to 

 associate shrubs with the rock-garden, and on its outer parts or 

 in groups near it, seek beauty from such shrubs as are here named, 

 and others to come, as the flora of northern regions becomes 

 better known to us. Danger from the association of shrubs of 

 a spreading nature with little rock plants may be avoided by 

 grouping all shrubs on banks, or groups, apart from the place of 

 the Gentians, Androsaces, and other fairies of the high rocks and 

 alpine meadows. Even without any attempt at a rock-garden 

 made in the ordinary garden-way, there are many places in 

 various parts of our islands where lovely rock-gardens may 

 be made by merely planting the natural rocks as they come 

 out in their own beautiful way whether on the often bare 

 hills of Wales, the many lovely rocky sites on the fringe of 

 mountains around Ireland, Scotland, northern and southern 

 England, and even on the sandstone rocks quite near London 

 in Sussex and Kent. In such places, without set design or 

 much care, we may enjoy the most enduring and the easiest to 

 form of rock-gardens. Another reason for making bush rock- 

 gardens about natural rocks cropping out of the ground is that the 

 soil about is often the sort we seek for evergreen shrubs of the 

 choicer kinds, being decayed rock, often of a peaty or sandy kind, 

 and the best for Rhododendrons, Azaleas, dwarf Kalmias, Heaths, 

 and many shrubs that in Nature inhabit the mountains, so that 

 where the natural rock breaks out, the very conditions so very 

 difficult to secure in the stoneless lowland country exist. As an 

 example of good work on such ground, we quote this about 

 planting rocky ground at Howth, near Dublin, by Mr Burbidge, 

 in the Field : 



" Coming upon them rather suddenly, the flashes of colour amongst 

 the, grey crags are startling in their intensity. A shower had just 

 passed over the hillside, and a gleam of sunshine illumined the 

 flowers, which shone out in all shades of crimson and purple, and 

 of orange and vermilion, softening down in shady corners into the 

 richest of old gold. Great rocks, like the moraine of some old glacier, 

 are piled and scattered on a sloping surface, above which great 

 masses of old Cambrian formation tower seemingly into the sky. 



