In My Vicarage Garden 



season, and their beauty, variety, and abundance 

 are as great in the autumn as in the summer. 

 Nor do I say anything about the cultivated 

 gardens. The Swiss cottager cares Httle for a 

 flower-garden ; his energies are all spent on vege- 

 tables, and his vegetable-garden is generally untidy 

 and ill kept. The only place in which he shows 

 a love for flowers is in his window-gardening, and 

 sometimes this is done very well indeed. I saw 

 in a chalet window near Meringen two large pots 

 of Portulacca which would have won a prize at 

 a London flower show ; they were beautiful in 

 themselves, and excellent specimens of good 

 cultivation. But of home gardens I have seen 

 little to admire except at some of the great 

 hotels — at Jnterlaken especially, but also at Thun. 

 These were really fine specimens of good garden- 

 ing, and show what could be done in that climate 

 with very little care ; the immense bushes of 

 geraniums of all sorts and of AlthcEa hibiscus 

 were quite magnificent. 



There were many other good flowers and fruits 

 besides the few I have named ; but even if I 

 named them all I could not, and I do not mean 

 to, say that the Alpine flora of September will 

 bear any comparison with that of June and July. 

 Many of the plants have long past flowering, and 

 of those that remain a large number are also 

 British plants. But my point is that if any lover 

 of plants, and especially of Alpines, should be 

 prevented from going to Switzerland earlier in the 

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