5 6 ALPINE FLOWERS. Part I. 



plentiful, and it is very desirable to grow a number of distinct 

 and handsome kinds in this way for the purpose of exhibiting 

 them at flower shows. 



We are pre-eminently great at exhibiting ; our pot-plants are 

 far before those of other countries ; specimens are to be seen at 

 every show which are models not only as regards beauty, but as 

 showing a remarkable development of plant from a very small 

 portion of confined earth, exposed to many vicissitudes ; yet in 

 one respect we have made no progress whatever, and that is, in 

 the pot-culture of alpine and herbaceous plants, for exhibition 

 purposes. 



Prizes are frequently offered at our flower shows for these 

 plants, and usually awarded, but the exhibitors rarely deserve a 

 prize at all, for their plants are usually badly selected, badly 

 grown, and such as never ought to appear on a stage at all. 

 In almost every other class, the first thing the exliibitor does is 

 to select appropriate kinds — :distinct and beautiful, and then he 

 makes some preparation beforehand for exhibiting them ; but 

 in the case of our hardy friends, anybody who happens to have 

 a rough lot of hardy miscellaneous rubbish exhibits it, and thus 

 it is that I have seen such beauties as the following more 

 than once exhibited: a common Thrift with the dead flower- 

 stems on it, and drooping over the green leaves ; a plant of 

 Arabis albida out of flower ; the Pellitory-of-the-wall, which has 

 as little beauty in flower as out of it : not to speak of a host of 

 worthless things not in themselves ugly, but far inferior to others 

 in the same families. What would become of our shows if the 

 same tactics were carried out in other classes ? Even the most 

 sufccessful exhibitors are apt to look about a day before a show, 

 for the best flowering cuttings of such things as Iberis correa- 

 folia, and, sticking four or five of these into a pot, present that 

 as a " specimen." Now, what is so easily grown into the neatest 

 of specimens as an Iberis ? By merely plunging in the ground 

 a few six-inch pots filled with rich soil, and putting in tliem a 

 few young cutting plants, they would, " left to nature," be good 

 specimens in a short time, while with a little pinching, and feed- 

 ing, and pegging-down, they would soon be fit to grace any 

 exhibition. So it is with many other things of like habit and 

 size — the dwarf shrubby Lithospermum prostratum, for example ; 

 a little time, and the simplest skill, will do all that is required. 

 Such subjects as the foregoing, with tiny shrubs like Andromeda 



