Even in the most unlikely places where Alpines are found, there is soil of some description, and if at any reasonable depth the roots will find it. Unless   the designer understands and appreciates the conditions under which rock plants occur, he cannot hope to make a garden home in which these transplanted wildings will flourish and multiply.

In the placing of stones forming the rock garden, valuable lessons may be gained from a study of Nature. Not that we want to imitate natural features or erect a miniature Alps in a small garden, but because Nature's arrangement of rocks is nearly always best suited to the growth of plants.

If we notice a particularly vigorous outgrowth of vivid mosses, small plants and ferns, we shall nearly always find that the rock face is neither perpendicular nor recessed, but that it slopes backward. 

The full exposure to sun and air, and the certainty with which after every shower the rain trickles into the crevices, accounts easily for the increased vegetation. Not so when the rocks overhang. Here there are dark gloomy hollows, which the sun's rays never pierce.

The earth in the fissures is dry and powdery, and in such places a flowering plant is a rarity. A tattered curtain of dark ivy may veil the naked rock, or on a porous limestone green vegetable growths will spread like stains, but of brightness and beauty there is none.

If advantage were taken of mounds and natural ridges, much labor and expense would be saved, at any rate in districts where there are rocks and mossy boulders cropping out of the earth.

On high ground where the surface soil has been washed away by rains, a minimum of labor will ensure a beautiful rock garden. After all, it is for those who live in favored localities to make the best use of their advantages.

The extreme hardiness of most Alpine plants is often overlooked. The smaller and rarer the flower, the less necessity for "coddling". It commonly happens that a pocket of rich, loamy soil in a sheltered corner, is regarded as a suitable spot in which to establish some choice seedling. The seedling nearly always dies. If the same plant had been given a fully exposed position in poor gravelly soil, interspersed with small stones, it would probably have survived and flourished.

It is astonishing the numbers of Alpines which are perfectly at home along the edges of rough paths, between stones, and in the joints of steps. The roots twist among broken stones and push their way through the coarse grit, always finding abundant moisture, surface evaporation being far less under these circumstances than in borders of good soil.

Many small plants thrive best when their roots are in dry quarters during the winter, in the chinks of an old wall or in a rock fissure, they escape altogether the moisture of the earth. Although water, either in the shape of a small stream or still pool, often occurs in beautiful rock gardens, it should never be found in places where Alpines are exclusively grown.

A lonely tarn may be found on the mountain side, or a tiny spring gush from the rocks, tracing its way like a silver thread to the valley below. But these instances are the exception, not the rule, and in the small space of the Alpine garden, water is destructive to the best effects. All signs of bold vegetation disappear as we ascend the mountain side and approach the home of Gentian and Edelweiss.

The rock garden should not be situated near highly cultivated ground, neither should walls or buildings come into the view. It is best approached from the region of woodland or shrubbery, and by walks, the margins of which are left undefined. Occasional mossy boulders, with bold grouping of Foxgloves and homely plants, will prepare the eye for a change, and incidentally heighten the effect produced.

Perhaps the most beautiful way of all in which to gain the garden of Alpines would be across a stretch of turf, through which in places the natural rock appeared. Here we should have patches and drifts of Gentiana acaulis, Muscari, Narcissi and Scilla. Fortunate indeed are those who may attempt something of this kind, a happy reminder of those exquisite gardens of Nature, the upland pastures of the Tyrol.