June 18, 1885. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER . 
497 
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Th 
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Royal Society at 4.30 p.m. Linnean Society at 8 r m. 
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SUN 
Third Sunday after Trinity. 
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[goniums. 
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Royal Horticultural Society—Committees at 11 A.M. ; Show of Peiar- 
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Richmond and Leeds Shows. 
ALPINE PLANTS. 
[Substancs of an addreis given to the Horticultural Club by the Secretary, 
June 9th.] 
N undertaking to deal with the most interesting 
subject of alpine plants, I must at the outset 
disclaim all ideas of treating it scientifically. 
This I cannot do, as I am not a botanist but 
merely a lover of plants. You must expect 
something very different from the interesting 
address given at our last meeting by my friend 
Mr. Druery on Ferns ; moreover, were I ever so 
competent, the subject is so wide, and embraces 
so many different genera and species, that I know not how I 
could very well treat it so. My observations will thus have 
to do with the practical side of the question, and with some 
things which I think are sometimes overlooked by those who 
are in so many directions beginning their culture. 
It is clear to all that the desire to cultivate these most 
beautiful and interesting plants has very widely extended 
during the past twenty years. We have seen, I am thankful 
to say, the decline of that most artificial and unsatisfactory 
style of gardening which is known as the bedding-out system 
—a system which cramped the energies of our gardeners, left 
our gardens bare for nine months of the year, and then filled 
them with beds of garish colours or with plants which made 
them more like a piece of carpet thrown upon the lawn than 
an English flower garden; where you might walk through a 
garden without getting one whiff of delicious odour or seeing 
one natural form. It was inevitable that a reaction from 
this should take place, and we have seen, in private gardens 
at least, a return to those old plants which we used to delight 
in as children, supplemented, as they have been, by so many 
beautiful forms gathered from all parts of the world. Pre¬ 
vious to that time the vendors of such plants might have been 
counted on the fingers of one hand, while now in all parts of 
the country we meet with firms who undertake to supply not 
only the commonest but the rarest species. It is not with 
herbaceous plants, however, I have to do, although the taste for 
alpine flowers has sprung from this. "When once the hardy 
herbaceous border began to take the place of ribbon borders 
and polychrome beds, it was immediately felt how many 
lovely things were unsuitable for the borders ; and then the 
rockery was formed—sometimes in bad taste, sometimes the 
reverse, sometimes with ill success, sometimes to the 
astonishment of the owners, with glorious results. 
Many persons have been deterred from attempting to 
grow alpine plants from their supposed difficulty, a difficulty 
which from various causes has been much exaggerated. It 
is true that there are some gems amongst them which seem 
to defy all efforts. Some years ago Mr. Backhouse of York 
told me that he had spent £100 in trying to grow Eritrichium 
nanum, a little alpine gem, but had as yet failed to do it 
well; and I remember once, a few years ago, going to see 
the garden of one of our most successful alpinists (if I may 
use the term). I asked him about it, and his reply was, 
“ Well, if you had come yesterday I should have proudly 
No. 260.— Vol. X., Thibd Series. 
said that I have succeeded; bat look there ! ” and I then saw 
a poor plant evidently in a galloping consumption. But it 
is commonly supposed that we cannot grow these plants 
because of their being covered during the winter with a 
warm mantle of snow, and that the humidity of our winters 
prevents their succeeding; but I have been a little staggered 
lately in considering the condition of two plants which are 
both common to Britain and Switzerland—according to Mons. 
H. Correvon there are only fifteen which are so (and shall I 
ever forget the sight of these beauties on the top of the Col du 
Balme ?)—I mean Gentiana verna and Silene acaulis, with 
both of which growers have experienced much difficulty, and 
the usual reply one gets is, “ Ob, you must recollect how 
impossible it is to imitate their condition in winter: how 
warm and dry they are kept; ” but they both occur in our 
islands at a great elevation. Silene acaulis is found on 
Helvelyn amongst other places, and there the rainfall is 
92 inches, so that it cannot be the moisture that hurts it. 
I am inclined to think that it is not so much this as the high 
temperature we sometimes get with wet in the winter months. 
This gives them a start prematurely, and then cold winds 
coming on them perishes them. There is no difficulty what¬ 
ever in growing Gentiana verna in pots, and I therefore 
think that the high elevation at which these plants occur 
with us keeps them in a low temperature. There is another 
plant which all travellers to Switzerland know very well, 
and which most of them are anxious to bring home, although 
they do so with the firm conviction that it will never grow. 
I mean the Edelweiss. This grows at a very high elevation, 
and so many lives have been lost in attempting to get it that 
it is now made penal to attempt doing so. And yet there 
are few plants more easily grown, as my friend Mr. Girdle- 
stone will tell you, and, as I have found, it freely seeds and 
comes up on the rockery of its own accord. It is sometimes 
said it is not so white as you gee it in Switzerland. This 
may possibly be owing to its growing in richer soil, and if 
it be planted in poorer soil it will be white, as its name 
implies “ nobly white.” After all, it is perhaps more valued 
as a matter of sentiment. I know of one lady who, travel¬ 
ling in Switzerland, was very anxious to obtain a plant. 
Her husband assured her that there was no romance about 
it; but all in vain, until, in passing through one of the 
Swiss towns she saw a plant of it in a broken pot outside a 
grocer’s window. All the romance was taken away, and she 
was contented to wait until she returned home, when she 
was told she should have a plant of it. 
There are a few things which it is necessary to bear in 
mind in the construction of a rockery, whether large or 
small. They are that it should be exposed as fully as pos¬ 
sible to the light and sun, and that the requirements of each 
plant should be well considered, although there is an adapta¬ 
bility about them which people do not always recognise. I 
have seen, for example, the curious but common Cobweb 
Houseleek growing on the rocks above the Mer de Glace at 
Chamounix at places where it had not apparently an atom of 
earth in which to root; but yet one knows that it will thrive 
and look as well in positions on the rockery where it can 
strike its roots deep into the soil. Again, Bamondia pyre- 
naica, that most lovely alpine plant, is found in its native 
habitat on the shady sides of rocks where the sun never 
seems to come, and we are enjoined to give it such a position 
on our rockeries; but I have a plant of it now in full bloom 
crowded with flowers where it gets a tolerable amount of 
sun. Then our common native Maidenhair, Adiantum 
Capillus-Veneris, is a most difficult plant to grow in the open 
air; but place it in a stove, and it becomes luxuriant to a 
degree. It is a great mistake to make a rockery in a shady 
part of the garden, for all who have seen the Alps in their 
floral beauty know well how completely exposed they are to 
the influence of the sun ; and where there are plants which 
do rejoice in the shade, such as the alpine Primulas, a place 
to suit them can generally be found on the east side of the 
No. 1916.— Vol. LXXII., Old Series. 
