166 JOUKNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



SOME LESSONS FROM THE OBSERVATION OF ALPINE 

 PLANTS IN THEIR NATIVE MOUNTAINS. 



By Mr. A. Clutton-Brock, F.R.H.S. 



[Lecture delivered May 18.] 



It is possible to take an interest and delight in alpine plants from many 

 different points of view, but no one, I believe, can take so keen an interest 

 and delight in the spectacle of them growing in their native mountains 

 as the gardener who tries to grow them in the very different conditions 

 of his own garden. There is a danger, of course, that he may be too 

 narrowly horticultural, that he may overlook all the wonderful beauty of 

 the pasture flowers, of the claret-coloured Columbines mixed with white 

 Orchises, of the Globe flowers and Campanulas that he knows already well 

 enough how to grow, and that he may not be content until he reaches 

 those high places where are the Androsaces and Eritrichium nanum and 

 where he will learn scarcely any secrets that can be applied to the condi- 

 tions of the ordinary English garden. But if he has a natural pleasure 

 in all beautiful flowers, and if he is not over-eager to learn what cannot 

 be learnt, and if at the same time he knows something, when he goes to 

 Switzerland, of the cultivation of alpine plants in England, then his 

 delight and interest in the beauty all about him will be enormously 

 increased by his practical interest in the question how he can best 

 reproduce some of that beauty in his own garden. 



This is the question which, speaking as a gardener to gardeners, I 

 propose to deal with to-day. My object, is — rather vaguely, I fear, and 

 discursively,— to discuss what we can learn about the culture of alpine 

 flowers from seeing them as they grow wild ; and I will begin with a few 

 words of warning about the manner in which an inexperienced gardener 

 is likely to be misled if he thinks he can learn everything about alpine 

 gardening in England from visiting the Alps in the flowering time. I 

 believe that some of the worst mistakes in rock gardening, have come 

 from a blind attempt to imitate natural conditions, without considering 

 the inevitable differences between those conditions and any that can be 

 provided in an English garden. I need scarcely say what those differences 

 are ; they are only too well known to all who have tried to grow alpines 

 in England. But we must always bear them in mind when we try to draw 

 conclusions from observation of plants growing wild in Switzerland as 

 to what they will need if they are to prosper in England. And the 

 difficulty of the problem is increased by the fact that some plants are far 

 more adaptable than others, and that only experience will tell us which 

 plants are adaptable and which are not. Thus many higher Androsaces 

 and Eritrichium nanum and Gentiana bavarica are not adaptable at all ; 

 and no one can keep them alive for long in England. But Ranunculus 

 glacial is, another very high alpine, and one that grows higher than Gentiana 



