PLANTING AND PROPAGATING ALPINES. 93 



culture, particularly for the Rock Cresses and Prim- 

 roses. It often happens that a frame becomes vacant 

 in May, and all that is necessary is to prepare a fine, 

 gritty compost, moisten it and sow. By sowing 

 thinly broadcast the trouble of pricking-off could be 

 saved, but experience teaches that the sowing is 

 rarely done thinly, and what is worse, in the pressure 

 of other work thinning out is overlooked, with the 

 result that the plants grow into a tangled mass, and 

 are very poor material for transplanting when autumn 

 comes. This being so, it is advisable to sow in drills 

 in boxes. There is a feeling that plants sown in boxes 

 are more important than those sown in the ground, 

 and consequently they receive more regular attention. 

 It is, too, essential to prick them off, and this enforced 

 treatment is greatly for their good, as when put out 

 in the garden, a few inches apart, they have room to 

 develop into sturdy stuff. 



Coloured Primroses may be sown a little later than 

 the others, in order to get the current season's seed, 

 which should be asked for specially. The Primulas 

 come slowly from old seed, and those who sow it 

 should be prepared to keep their pans and boxes in 

 hand for several months. 



Fresh Rock Cresses ought to be raised annually as 

 regularly as Wallflowers and Sweet Williams. It 

 is apparently a very easy thing to propagate old 

 clumps by division, but when the flower-lover attacks 

 them he finds that the spreading mass of growth 

 which he proposed to divide really consists of loose 

 tufts on long fibres springing from a common root- 



