HOUSES FOR ALPINE PLANTS. 



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Personally, I find these houses well devoted to Alpine plants 

 all the year round, although in summer, by removal of the roof, 

 they almost cease to be houses. But some may find it convenient 

 (as I have occasionally done) to utilise the house during the 

 summer for the choicer Carnations, Begonias, Zonal Geraniums, 

 or other plants valuing so much of protection ; and in that case 

 the Alpines (which for this purpose must be in pots) may be 

 plunged in ashes or fibre, or placed under a north wall in the 

 open, hot sun thus being prevented from reaching the sides of 

 pots, and ample watering being given. 



And now I am brought to the matter of the furnishing and 

 arrangement of the Alpine house. 



There is much to be said, no doubt, in favour of the planting- 

 out system in such houses ; furnishing them, in whole or in part, 

 with suitable rockeries or beds, and so planting the Alpines in a 

 more picturesque fashion. I have myself so planted one of my 

 little houses, thus substituting a pleasing and closely furnished 

 rockery (on a small scale of course) for a pot arrangement. This 

 planting-out system will, naturally and best, be followed by those 

 who should adopt the plan of so constructing the house as to 

 make it during the summer, by removal of the glass roof, merely 

 a part of the outside rock garden (of which, perhaps, more 

 presently). And the plan better suits those plants (not a few) 

 which, on the ground of the great length of their roots, or for 

 other reasons, are unsuited to pot-culture 



But otherwise and generally the result of my own experience 

 thus far, leads me rather to favour the plan of furnishing the 

 house with Alpines in pots. Its evident advantages are that we 

 thus have the plants under more complete control, that each can 

 be kept to the sort of soil which it needs, and that the house can 

 be kept perpetually beautiful by the system, already described, of 

 substituting for any plants whose beauty is past others taken 

 from the " reserve forces." My own little houses, 21 feet by 

 10 feet, will each hold 300 or 400 of the G-inch pans which I most 

 use; proportionally fewer, of course, if the ends are furnished with 

 rockeries or with larger pots of Conifers and choice shrubs. 

 For the " ends " will, in the absence of any rockery to assist, 

 be best hidden with a small bank of shrubs, Ferns, &C, furnishing 

 them nearly or quite to the top. Suitable for this purpose are the 

 smaller hardy Bamboos, Pniuuiopitys elegans, Junipers (especially 



