ALPINE PLANTS ON WALLS 101 



than his neighbour ; but of the use of frames for flowering alpines in 

 pots I must add a few words. 



'There are certain very early flowering alpines upon which a mix- 

 ture of admiration and lamentation is bestowed at the end of every 

 winter. Their flowers are often beautiful in a treacherous fortnight at 

 the beginning of February, and are suddenly destroyed by a return of 

 winter in its severest form. I may mention, among others, Saxifraga 

 burseriana and sancta, and their near relatives and hybrids, Primula 

 marginata and intermedia, Androsace carnea, Ghammjasme, and Lag- 

 geri, several dwarf species of Alyssum and Iberis, and there are a good 

 many more. Pots or pans containing these may be grouped together 

 in an open sunny spot, and plunged in sand or coal-ashes, in a rough 

 frame made for them, so that the lights may be not more than three 

 or four inches above the pots. These lights should be removed in the 

 daytime when the weather is fine, and air should be admitted, accord- 

 ing to the temperature, at night. Such a sheet of elegant beauty, 

 lasting, if well ranged, through February, March, and April, may be 

 obtained in this way that I often wonder why amateurs attempt to 

 flower early alpines in any other fashion. 



' With me April is the earliest month in which I can expect to have 

 anything gay on the open rockery without disappointment. I am 

 obliged to disfigure the slopes with sheets of glass and handlights to 

 preserve through winter at all Omphalodes Lucilice, Onosma tauricum, 

 Androsace sarmentosa, and others which cannot endure winter wet, 

 and the real pleasure of the rockery begins when the frame alpines are 

 waning. I recommend those masses of covered pots in early spring to 

 all cultivators of alpines. 



'Alpines on Walls. — A few years ago I was driving through 

 Dorking, and I noticed a smooth and by no means ancient brick wall 

 covered, above the reach of boys' hands, with Erinus alpinus. Eough 

 stone walls I had often seen well clothed with alpines, but from that 

 time I became aware that there is hardly any garden wall, of whatever 

 material, of which the parts otherwise bare might not be made orna- 

 mental with flowers. I do not suggest that such things should super- 

 sede climbing Eoses and wall-fruit, but how often we see bare walls on 

 which nothing is grown at all ! The capabilities of rough stone walls 

 for growing mountain plants are very great. Falls of Aubrietia and 

 Iberis, groups of Saxifrage, and similar subjects may make many a comer 

 gay instead of bare. Some very pretty things I grow on walls which 

 have defied all my attempts to cultivate them elsewhere. I may 

 specify Lychnis Lagasca, a fragile evergreen plant of shrubby growth,' 

 easily multiplied by seed, which alternate snovfs and thaws generally 



