Part I. 



THE ROCK-GARDEN. 



17 



up here and there from the mass of vegetation will produce the 

 best effect. 



Alpine flowers are often seen in multitudes and in their love- 

 Uest aspect in some little elevated level spot, frequently without 

 a rock being visible through it, and, if so, merely peeping up 

 here and there. They are lovely too in the desolate wastes of 

 broken rock, where they cower down between the stones in 

 isolated, lonely-looking tufts ; but it is only when Gentians and 

 silvery Cudweeds, and minute white Buttercups, and strange large 

 Violets, and Harebells that waste all their strength in flowers, and 

 fairy Daffodils that droop their heads as gracefully as Snowdrops, 

 are seen, forming a dense turf of living enamelled work, that alpine 

 flowers are seen in their fairest aspects. Fortunately the flowery 



Fig. iS.— A little upland valley in a rock-gairden. (From a fhoiogra^h.) 



turf and stony mound are much more possible to us than the bare 

 moraine blocks or arid cliff. The accompanying illustration is a 

 view of a httle elevated stony valley in an artificial rock-garden 

 Its surface is composed of comparatively large stones, buf 

 between them there are chinks leading to deep masses of earth, 

 broken stones, and grit, and from thence issue vigorously tufts 

 of the Moss Campion and other, plants which lap over the 

 hard edges of the stones, and become at all seasons cushions 

 of glistening verdure — in spring and summer of innumerable 

 starry flowers. Stone and plants are seen in about equal pro- 

 portions, and the- effect is one 6i the most pleasing I have ever 

 seen in garden or in wild. 



In cultivating the very rarest and most minute alpine plants, 

 the stony, or partially stony, surface is to be preferred. In their 



C 



