250 
THE AMATEUR’S FLOWER GARDEN. 
the coldest, rather than in the warmest place, not because 
long-continued frost is any particular benefit to them, but 
because the bursts of bright weather we usually have in early 
spring tend to hurry them into growth too soon, and they may 
afterwards suffer through the return of frost, snow, miserable 
rain, or keen, parching east winds. It is just because of the 
variableness of our winters that alpine plants are frequently 
grown in alpine houses, which are low-roofed, brick-built 
greenhouses without heating apparatus of any kind, affording 
shelter only, and saving the delicate alpine plants from the 
destructive influence of intense cold following unseasonable 
warmth, and long-continued rains, accompanied with forcing 
weather when they should be still and quiet under a covering 
of snow. 
But all this far-reaching scheme of a rockery may suit but 
few of our readers ; nevertheless, the principles are the same 
in the construction of a small as of a large rockery, and for 
just a moment we will peep at one of the smallest, which 
happens also to be one of the best with which we are familiar 
in our daily walks. This consists of a mere bank of common 
loam heaped up against a cottage wall, and faced with bricks 
and burrs that the cottager gathered from the road-side bit by 
bit, and saved until he had enough. It is crowded with beau¬ 
tiful plants, and is in all seasons a most elegant adornment of 
a rustic artist’s home. In the depth of winter it is fringed 
with the golden-tipped stonecrop, which then, owing to the 
yellow colour of the tips of the shoots, is nearly as gay as 
the common stonecrop is when in full flower in the height of 
summer. As the spring advances, tufts of saxifrages, pri¬ 
mulas, drabas, cerastiums, arabis, and alpine phlox burst into 
flower, and make a brilliant enamelling of snow-white stars, 
rosy cups, blotches of gold and silver, and tiny sheets of 
purple and pink. These are followed by bonny clumps of 
campanulas, arenarias, tunicas, armerias, aubrietias, corydalis, 
linarias, the alpine lychnis, the hoary blue-flowered thyme, 
and tufts of the lurid red flowers of the common houseleek and 
the very delicate and pretty spider’s-web houseleek. It is not 
wanting in flowers in autumn, but it is more enjoyable then 
for its sumptuous garniture of moss-like verdure of many 
delicate shades of green which the saxifrages contribute, 
varied with patches of grey and golden leafage. No one 
could determine from its appearance that it consists of 
