122 GARDENS PAST AND PRESENT 



dazzling, but provokingly capricious, denizens of 

 the highest rocks and moraines. Fortunately there 

 are hosts of other plants of less difficulty which 

 may be beloved of ordinary folk, with fair hope 

 of success. 



My own lines, years ago, were laid on dry chalk 

 hills where flints were plentiful the last kind of 

 stone, perhaps, which would suggest itself for 

 rock-work of any sort. For flints have a certain 

 smooth aggressive baldness that is provokingly 

 obtrusive and difficult to veil. Yet in the clear 

 air of those bleak uplands, and in an unpretend- 

 ing little Alpine garden, consisting partly of nar- 

 row stony borders on the level and bounded by 

 a very primitive rock-work built up of those un- 

 promising flints, many beautiful low-growing 

 plants, some of them genuine mountaineers, were 

 quite content and even happy. The vigorous blue 

 flower spikes of the Carinthian Wulfenia, at a time 

 when its dislikes were less understood than now, 

 used to excite the admiration and envy of less 

 fortunate neighbours ; and ah ! how the lovely 

 Rocky Mountain Aquilegias, and the Siberian 

 A. glandulosa, used to thrive in that little garden, 

 for it was possible then to obtain good seed and 

 pure of the unmixed species of columbine, which 

 can hardly be said now ; while Himalayan primulas 

 grew fat and flourishing in one of the shadier 

 borders. The soil was naturally full of lime, which 

 suited the lime-lovers like the encrusted saxifrages. 

 The drainage in a chalk district is always perfect 

 as far as stagnant moisture is concerned. The 

 flints held all humidity without absorbing it, and 



