CHAPTER XI 

 FRAMES FOR ALPINES 



FRAMES are necessary adjuncts either to the rock 

 garden or alpine house. They are essential to 

 the due preparation of the plants for the latter, and 

 equally so as cultivators, caretakers and storehouses 

 from which the supplies for the former may be drawn. 

 Failures and deaths from causes unforeseen will of 

 necessity arise, and slug and vole must always be reck- 

 oned with if the rock garden is to look its best. To be 

 of a serviceable kind the alpine plant frame must be 

 of special design or construction, and particularly so 

 in the all-important matter of ventilation. The 

 ordinary garden frame will not do. It is too close and 

 stuffy, conserving too much moisture for woolly-leaved 

 subjects in particular, and, generally, for other plants 

 not of this nature, but which are not content unless 

 breathing a pure, bracing air. We have, however, laid 

 so much stress on the question of ventilation in respect 

 to the alpine house that we have need here only to 

 drive home the point, remembering that the frame is 

 but a modified form of it, whose restricted air space 

 and opportunities for ventilation are all opposed to 

 the success of the plants we have in mind.. Damp, 

 stagnant air is fatal to most alpines, while highly con- 

 genial to the presence of slugs, the arch-enemy of our 

 favourites. From more than one point of view, then, 

 the chief object should be that we dispel damp. 



The Best Type of Frame.— The nearest approach to 

 the perfect frame I have ever seen or handled was 

 brick-built. The front wall was two and a half feet 

 high, the back wall three feet three inches. The frame 



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