GENTIANA CAMPESTRIS and GENTIANA BAVARICA.
When, therefore, we choose the parcel of ground to be transformed into a Swiss mountain meadow, we should not be dismayed if its surface is already more than undulating; we should not summon assistance to level it up and smooth it out. We are not proposing to make a croquet-lawn, but are supposed to be inspired by Nature in one of her wild, “irresponsible” moods. Violence, however, should depend upon size. If we are dealing with several acres, we can afford to be grand with regard to “accident”; but if the land at our disposal is, perhaps, half an acre, irregularity should be to scale; for to be artistic we should avoid extravagance.
Rocks, as has been said, are an almost essential feature of an Alpine field. The ground should rise towards them and should be of a poorer nature than where the grass is to be really meadowy; for upon the poorer ground we shall be dependent for many colonies of gay and interesting plants which would be out of place, even they could exist, among the thicker grasses. Here we may count upon brilliance long after the Geranium and its field-consorts have been mown down—brilliance afforded by such subjects as Ononis natrix, Linum tenuifolium, L. alpinum, Jasione montana, Campanula spicata, C. barbata, C. persicifolia, Trifolium alpinum, Eryngium alpinum, Vicia onobrychioides, Veronica urticæfolia, Lathyrus heterophyllus, Anthyllis vulneraria, Carduus defloratus, Verbascum phlomoides, and Onobrychis viciæfolia, the rosy Sainfoin or “wholesome hay,” for which the ass is said to bray.
The rocks employed ought, in greater part, to be of a “generous” nature, not hard and unresponsive. They should if possible be even soft (as rocks go) and somewhat liable to disintegration—rocks upon which, with a little preliminary encouragement, Sedums, Dianthus, and Sempervivums can take root. They ought not to be built up to form what is generally recognised as a rockwork, but should be large, massive, and sparsely set, cropping up from the ground haphazard and as if their greater bulk were beneath the soil. Grass should be encouraged to grow about them, even upon them in places; and Poa alpina, forma vivipara is a suitable, as well as a most interesting, grass for this purpose. The Alpine Clover, too (Trefolium alpinum), may well be encouraged to spread around the base of these rocks and over the ground that slopes up to them. With its large, loose, rosy flower-heads, sometimes white or lilac, it is an ever-welcome June visitor, especially where it luxuriates; as, for instance, at Le Planet, below the French side of the Col de Balme.
I have said that the rocks ought, in greater part, to be of a “generous” nature; and I have said this because a hard and unresponsive rock here and there would not be out of place. Although quantity equally with quality is the predominant note in Alpine floral circumstance, it is not an invariable rule, and something of barrenness only adds to the scene of plenty. Moreover, a cold, bare rock with just one cleft in it where some single tuft of Dianthus, or of Veronica saxatilis, for instance, can cling is often a very precious object amid a surrounding exuberance of blossom. Often in English rock-gardens there is too little unoccupied rock. Ubiquity of plant life in this respect is not so artistic as when there is a modicum of reticence; nor is it so truthful.
Another by no means inappropriate feature is that which can be lent by shrubs or bushes; not as hedges, for Switzerland, when compared with England, may be said to be devoid of
“... Little lines
Of sportive wood run wild.”