Icônes Florae Alpinae Plantarum 



PREFACE 



Too often hy far does one hear the gardener exclaim, " thank Heavcn 

 I am no botanist! ". He niight as well be proiid of going into battle unarmcd : 

 for the life of the gardener is one long battle against the wiles of Catalogues, 

 and in that battle botany is the only weapon that can serve him. Our need of 

 knowledge grows wilh the lack of it : and the cultivator who lias begun by 

 being happy with the commoner plants is soon beginning to widen his 

 ambitions and his collection. Beauliful as Alyssum sa.ratile or Arabis nlhida 

 may be, thèse are not necessarily the last Ayords in the rock-garden. And further 

 additions to that vocabulary are not always so nionosyllabically rvisy to 

 détermine. 



Ilere, indced, divide the Iwo groat stroains into which our increasing 

 flood of rock-garden-Iove is (lowing. For very many of the very rich are 

 increasingly content wilh a style of gardening which I can only call 

 carpet-bedding. In huge irregular plots they plant, at neat intervais, two or 

 three hundred spécimens of some oue plant, with tidy bare earth between, and 

 ihen another plot beyond of soniething else. Thus they hâve an overwhelming 

 display of colour in its season : and this is ail they désire, without any furlher 

 ambition to bave plants of spécial interest, or plants whose labels do indeed 

 belong to ihem by right. This is no more, in fact, than the abandoned and 

 despised carpet-bedding of our Victorian ancestors, except that today ihecolours 

 are not lait down in lines and circles, but in irregular triangles and stretches, 

 divided off froin one another by stone, so that the effect at last is that of a 

 crazy-patch-work quilt, each colour scgregatcd wilh stilchning. Too much is 

 this often the style of our exhlbils and rich gardens ; but il is clear thaï owners 

 who pursue the mère objet of show, are looking on their plants as so many 

 mère colour-constituents, and are nol therefore to be reckoned as gardeners 

 at ail, but rather as painters, good or bad, with vegelable materials. For the 

 gardener is he who loves his flock for ilself, individually, as a china-maniac 

 loves his pots, or an old-fashioned mother her children. 



And of such enthusiasts, fortunately, the number is conslanlly growing ; 

 more and more do they turn away from vain display, more and more désire to 

 know the plants they grow, to get by heart their homes and names and habits. 

 And hère thèse enthusiasts enter ihe domain of danger. For supply créâtes 

 demand : and calaloguesare conslanlly licklingthe palalcs of possible purchasers 

 with liie names of new plants. But in ihc swirling océans of templalion the 



