80 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



ALPINE GAEDENS. 



By Monsieur H. Correvon, F.E.H.S. 

 [Read May 9, 1911.] 



The cultivation of mountain plants, and more especially those of 

 alpine growth, has been in favour on the Continent for more than 

 sixty years, and still longer in England. The Genevan botanist, 

 BoissiER, began about the year 1850 to construct in his interesting and 

 rare garden at Yalleyres at the foot of the Jura rockwork in which he 

 at first cultivated plants he had brought from Spain and the East, and 

 afterwards those from the Alps. His garden soon became celebrated 

 and visitors came to it from all parts. It gave to others the impulse to 

 go and do likewise, and that is how I, being a neighbour of Boissier, 

 became initiated in my childhood into the cultivation of plants in 

 lockeries. 



I do not know when or how this taste first arose in England ; but 

 even in the sixteenth century, according to Paxton's Botanical Dic- 

 tionary, certain types had been brought from the Alps and cultivated, 

 such as Primula Auricula, Gentiana acaulis, and G. lutea. 



The idea of cultivating these plants in rockwork is reasonable 

 enough, and I myself have recommended it in my first volmne, Alpine 

 Plants, published in 1884. Nevertheless, it is neither sesthetic nor 

 natural. If, on the one hand, the species belonging to rocks (saxatilei, 

 plants) need fissures in stones for their development, on the other 

 there is a nmltitude of terrestrial plants, those of alpine fields or 

 meadows, which it is ridiculous to treat in this manner. That is why 

 we have established alpine gardens. Instead of immense construc- 

 tions "A la Mont Blanc," we prefer nowadays the establish- 

 ment of small rockeries scattered about in the grass or on a natural 

 slope. The supreme art of gardening consists in grouping artisticall}' 

 open-air plants in the midst of verdure and green sward, and ii: 

 arranging them with a view to producing pictures which imitate natura 

 scenery. | 



It is moreover in this spirit that the great English artists hav< 

 worked, to whom belong the most beautiful artificial alpine garden 

 that I have ever seen, those of Warley, Friar Park, Leonardslee, Soutl 

 Lodge, and Batsford. I can repeat here what I have said for more thai 

 forty years, which is that in England is best understood the interes 

 that attends the cultivation of mountain plants and that in this countr| 

 it has been pushed most forward, at any rate in the gardens of amateurj 

 As for botanic gardens, there are certainly no collections in the worl, 

 which can rival those of Kew and Edinburgh, although the alpirj 

 botanic gardens that have been constructed in the Swiss mountair| 

 offer perhaps more brilliancy and more attractiveness because of tl^' 



