WILLIAM ROBINSON 307 



gardener is the trustee of a world of fair living things, to be kept 

 with care and knowledge in necessary subordination to human 

 convenience, and to the conditions of his work. The English 

 Flower Garden. (Nature in the Garden?) 



So far from its being true, that high mountain plants cannot be 

 cultivated, there is no alpine flower that ever cheered the traveller's 

 eye that cannot be grown in these islands. What are alpine 

 plants ? The word alpine is used to denote the vegetation that 

 grows naturally on all high mountain-chains, whether they spring 

 from tropical plains or green northern pastures. Above the culti- 

 vated land these flowers begin to occur on the fringes of the 

 woods ; they are seen in multitudes in the broad pastures with 

 which many mountains are robed, enamelling their green, and 

 where neither grass nor tall herbs exist; where mountains are 

 crumbled into slopes of shattered rock by the contending forces 

 of heat and cold; even there, amidst the glaciers, they spring 

 from the ruined ground, as if the earth-mother had sent up her 

 loveliest children to plead with the spirits of destruction. . . . 



Alpine plants possess the charm of endless variety, and include 

 things widely different : tiny orchids, tree-like moss, and ferns 

 that peep from crevices of alpine cliffs, often so small that they 

 seem to cling to the rocks for shelter, not daring to throw forth 

 their fronds with airy grace ; bulbous plants, from Lilies to Blue- 

 bells ; evergreen shrubs, perfect in leaf and blossom and fruit, yet 

 so small that a glass would make a house for them ; dwarfest 

 creeping plants, spreading over the brows of rocks, draping them 

 with lovely colour; Rockfoils and Stonecrops no bigger than 

 mosses, and, like them, mantling the earth with green carpets in 

 winter ; in a word, alpine plants embrace nearly every type of the 

 plant-life of northern lands. The English Flower Garden. (Alpine 

 Flower and Rock Gardens.} 



