ALPINE PLANTS IX THEIR NATIVE MOUNTAINS. 169 



can provide an absurd and insignificant imitation of the chaos, but we 

 cannot provide the elevation with the pure mountain air, the sustained 

 winter frost and the constant summer moisture implied by it. If we 

 strew our little boulders about at random on some dry slope of our 

 gardens, a few stone-crops or seedling wall-flowers will perhaps flourish 

 among them ; but most other plants will seize the first opportunity of 

 dying ; and an imitation chaos in an English garden bare of vegetation is 

 scarcely less ugly than a rubbish heap. It is useless to study the rock- 

 work of Nature, unless you know what functions rocks ought to perform in 

 your garden. But if you know this, you can get many valuable hints from 

 the Alps, both horticultural and aesthetic. The first of these is that all 

 rocks shall be placed so that the roots of plants near them will be able to 

 run under them and so get protection from drought in summer and from 

 cold and damp in winter. I mention this elementary point because I 

 have often seen in ambitious rock gardens the rocks driven perpendicularly 

 down into the earth, in which position they are of no more use than on a 

 wall. You will notice in the Alps that the finest specimens of alpine 

 plants are to be found often in conditions not otherwise favourable, but at 

 the edge of a great boulder which slants into the ground, so that their 

 roots can run under it and get coolness and shelter as far as they are likely 

 to penetrate ; and it is in the slanting fissures of huge rocks that many of 

 the more difficult plants grow best and most abundantly. Therefore 

 never place a rock without thinking of the plant that is to profit by it ; 

 never consider rocks apart from roots, for the function of rocks in a rock 

 garden is to protect roots and not to look rugged or picturesque. The 

 next point of importance is to have your rocks as large as possible, so that 

 they may sink a good distance into the soil and give continuous protection 

 to deep rooting plants. We cannot, of course, have the giant boulders of 

 the Alps ; but it is where they root under these great boulders that alpine 

 plants flourish best ; and even those which flourish without rocks at all 

 in their native mountains may need their protection in a hot Surrey 

 garden. Silene acaulis, as I have said, is often a pasture plant in the 

 high valleys ; but in Surrey if you are to give it as much sunshine as is 

 needed to make it flower well, you should protect it from drought by 

 planting it where its roots can run under a large rock. It is the same 

 with so easy a plant as Dry as octopetala which grows everywhere in the 

 Alps. I have seen the bottom of a valley carpeted with it, beautifully 

 mixed with Gentiana verna. It also needs plenty of sun if it is to flower 

 freely, but in hot gardens it will suffer from drought in a sunny place, 

 unless its deep roots can run under a stone. So it is with Polygala 

 Chamaebuxus, another very common plant in the Alps. Even there it 

 varies much in quality, and the most beautiful plants, both in habit and in 

 colour, are not those which grow straggling and wiry in the glades of a 

 pine-wood, but the short tufts mixed, perhaps, with the brilliant Viola 

 calcarata on a rocky and grassy slope. We should try to grow it thus, 

 taking care to water it well until it is established and keeping the stalks 

 short by layering them in stony soil. These are all plants that thrive 

 best among rocks in England, and so is the beautiful Daphne Cneorum 

 of the Southern Alps, which always grows thickest and flowers best when 

 it is continuously layered and not allowed to grow leggy, 



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