1 HE CULTIVATION OF ALPINE PLANTS. 



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Stagnant air, whether damp or dry, is their worst enemy ; 

 but if the weather is warm enough to set them growing, they 

 may easily die for want of moisture. I will not say more than 

 this, for experience is the best guide, and everyone thinks he can 

 manage his frames better 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 

 mixture 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 de- 

 stroyed by a return of winter in its severest form. I may men- 

 tion, amongst others, Saxifraga Burseriana and sancta, and 

 their near relatives and hybrids, Primula marginata and inter- 

 media, Androsace carnea, Chamajasme, and Laggeri, 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, according to the temperature, at night. Such 

 a sheet of elegant beauty, lasting, if well arranged, 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 disappoint- 

 ment. I am obliged to disfigure the slopes with sheets of glass 

 and handlights to preserve through winter at all Ompha- 

 lodes Lucilice, Onosma tauricum, Androsace sarmentosa, and 

 others which cannot endure winter wet, and the real plea- 

 sure 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. 



I promised to speak of alpines on walls, and that shall end 

 my say. 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 aljnnics. Kough 

 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 



