

CHAPTER III. 



Planting and Propagating Alpines. 



When the flower-lover sees, in examining a rockery, 

 plants clinging to the very face of the stones, and 

 rambling over them as moss will ramble over the 

 bole of an old orchard tree, he realises that Nature 

 can do a great deal more than he in estabhshing plants. 

 She learned the business before man appeared on the 

 earth at all, and she will very likely be engaged in it 

 long after he has left. Nevertheless, when a rockery 

 is made in a garden the flower-lover will not leave 

 Nature to choose the plants for covering it, and he will 

 take care to keep it well in hand from its very incep- 

 tion. Otherwise, he will find it overgrown with 

 coarse plants, and in a year or two many of his choicest 

 plants will have perished. 



There are no more beautiful spring flowers than 

 the Rock Cresses, and the Aubrietias in particular 

 are charming and valuable to a degree. But their 

 beauty largely consists in their habit of throwing out 

 long, blossom-covered streamers, and this renders 

 them dangerous companions for delicate things, which 

 often suffer severely from being over-hung, apart 

 altogether from the fact — by no means a negligible 

 one — that the cover affords a congenial home for 



