24 
THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 
perfection, pots or pans nine inches in diameter, and about five 
inches in depth, should be used. These should be perforated at the 
bottom and round the lower part of the sides with numerous small 
holes, for admitting air to the roots, and in order to secure ample 
drainage. Trom one to two inches of drainage should be placed in 
the bottom of the pots ; and, when the potting is finished, small 
white pebbles should be placed around the plant on the surface of 
the soil. Upon these many of the creeping and prostrate kinds re- 
cline, and are prevented from damping olf, as the air passes freely 
under and amongst the stems and leaves. The stones also tend to 
keep the soil uniformly moist, by preventing evaporation ; and, in 
many cases, the roots of some of the rarer species luxuriate more 
under these stones than elsewhere in the pot. At the beginning of 
the growing season, abundance of water should be given, often 
twice a day ; for it is certain that alpine plants, in their native habi- 
tats, are at that stage nearlj' at the point of saturation, in consequence 
of the melting of the snow above and around them. In all moun- 
tainous regions a great amount of atmospheric moisture exists, and 
hence the practice of watering alpine plants overhead with a rose 
watering pot is beneficial to them.* 
Perhaps an improvement in the management of alpine plants 
would be to set the pots, in the summer season, on a frame or grating 
of cast iron, placed a few inches distant from a cistern or pool of 
water, by which means a constant evaporation would take place, and 
a moist cool atmosphere be produced. Or the pots might be 
arranged in beds, and a pipe, finely pierced with holes, might pass 
along the centre of each bed, at such a distance above it as that 
the shower would just cover the bed. A shower might thus be 
applied at pleasure, and the plants kept moist by prolonged and 
gentle rain, instead of being deluged by sudden and heavy’- rain from 
the watering-pot. 
Many alpine plants may be very successfully grown in towns, in 
back yards, and on house-tops ; and it is believed that an extensive 
collection might be so grown in the centre of Loudon, if placed in 
frames covered with glass sashes, to protect the plants from the 
numerous atmospheric impurities. 
* For the encouragement of all lovers of alpines, Messrs. Backhouse, in the 
new edition of their catalogue for 1871, make the following statement : “ A large 
proportion of the truly alpine species, which find their natural home in the 
crevices of rocks at a great elevation, grow with perfect ease in an open herder, 
in ordinary loamy soil. And, strange to say, some that succeed with difficulty 
on artificial rock-work flourish well under such circumstances, and thus bring 
within the range of every garden a large and varied amount of beauty.” 
Educational Floriculture. — At several of the schools in which the children 
of the poor are educated in Manchester, free distributions of hyacinth-bulbs have 
been made, with directions for their cultivation. In the spring, school exhibitions 
of hyacinths will be held and prizes awarded; and we may suppose that something 
good, morally, will follow. There is, we think, a trifle more sense in this 
procedure than the London practice of distributing late in the autumn the 
exhausted bedding plants from the public parks. It is well to give plants to the 
pr.i,r, but not particularly well to give them such as the gardeners would otherwise 
thro-w away. 
