the expense attendant upon their culture afford them important protection—a protection which Alpines do not possess to anything like the same extent.
Of course, the fate in store for Alpines in England is not of so inevitable a nature as that awaiting Japanese gardening; for in this latter “craze” there is an element scarcely present in Alpine gardening. We can more or less fathom the spirit of Alpine gardening and are therefore quite able to construct something that shall be more or less intelligent and true; but can we say as much for ourselves with regard to Japanese gardening? I think not. I think that largely it is, and must remain, a sealed book to us. Japanese gardening, as Miss Du Cane very truly points out in her Preface to “The Flowers and Gardens of Japan,” is “the most complicated form of gardening in the world.” Who in England will master the “seven schools” and absorb all the philosophy and subtle doctrine which governs them? Who in England will bring himself to see a rock, a pool, a bush as the Japanese gardener sees them, as, indeed, the Japanese people in general see them? The spirit of Japanese gardening is as fundamentally different from the spirit of English gardening as that of Japanese art is from English art. What poor, spiritless results we have when English art assumes the guise of Japanese art! It is imitation limping leagues behind its model. And it is this because it is unthought, unfelt, unrealized.
Strikingly individual, the Japanese outlook is much more impersonal than is ours. Needs must that we be born into the traditions of such a race to comprehend and feel as it does about Nature. A Japanese must have his rocks, streams, trees proportioned to his tea or dwelling house and bearing mystic religious significance. Such particular strictness is the product of ages of upbringing. A few years, a generation or two could not produce in us the reasoned nicety of this phase of appreciation; still less the reading of some book or the visit to some garden built by Japanese hands. The spirit of a race is of far longer weaving; one summer does not make a butterfly;
LAC CHAMPEX in cloudland at the end of May; CALTHA PALUSTRIS and PRIMULA FARINOSA by the water edge.
“… think of all
The suns that go to make one speedwell blue.”
To us a tiny chalet is quite well placed amid stupendous cliffs and huge, tumbled boulders, and is fit example to follow, if only we are able to do so. In Alpine gardening we feel no need to study the size of our rocks in relation to our summer-house, or place them so that they express some high philosophic or mystic principle. We have no cult beyond Nature’s own cult in this matter. We see, and we are content to see, that Nature has no nice plan and yet is invariably admirable; we see, and we are content to see, that if man, as in Switzerland, chooses to plant his insignificant dwelling in the midst of great, disorderly rocks and crowded acres of brilliant blossoms, it is romantic garden enough and worthy of as close imitation as possible.
With the Japanese, gardening is perhaps more a deeply æsthetic culture than it is the culture of plants. Where we are bald, unemotional, “scientific” gardeners, they will soar high into the clouds of philosophic mysticism. Truer children of the Cosmos than we Western materialists, they walk in their gardens as in some religious rite. We, too, no doubt, are often dreamers; we, too, are often wont to find in our gardens expression for our searching inner-consciousness; but how different are our methods, how different the spirit we wish to express.
The most, therefore, we can accomplish in Japanese modes of gardening is to ape them; and of this, because of its emptiness, we shall very soon tire. The things which are most enduring are the things honestly felt and thought; for the expression of the true self reaches out nearest to satisfaction. Unless, then, we are apes in more than ancestry, Japanese gardening can have no long life among us. Alpine gardening is far more akin to our natural or hereditary instincts; it holds for us the possibility of an easier and more honest appreciation. And it is just here, in this very fact, where lies much of the danger which may overtake and smother the immense and growing enthusiasm with which Alpines are meeting.
How best, then, to direct and build up this enthusiasm into something substantial, something that shall secure for Alpines a lasting place in our affections? The answer is in another question: What better than a larger, more comprehensive appeal to Alpine nature; what better than a more thorough translation of Alpine circumstance to our grounds and gardens?
Now, to this end we must look around us in the Alps to find that element in plant-life which we have hitherto neglected; and if we do this, our eyes must undoubtedly alight upon the fields. Hitherto these have been a greatly neglected quantity with us when planning our Alpine gardens, and their possibilities have been almost entirely overlooked in respect of our home-lands. Why should we not make more pronounced attempts to create such meadows, either as befitting adjuncts to our rock works or as embellishments to our parks? I venture to think that such an extension and direction of our enthusiasm would add much sterling popularity to that already acquired by Alpines in our midst, besides doing far greater justice to many of their number. I venture to think, also, that it would add much to the joy and health of home-life. These thoughts, therefore, shall be developed and examined as we push forward with this volume, first of all making a careful study of the fields on the spot, and marking their “moods and tenses.”
CHAPTER II
ALPINE FLOWER-FIELDS
“If you go to the open field, you shall always be in contact directly with the Nature. You hear how sweetly those innocent birds are singing. You see how beautifully those meadow-flowers are blossoming. … Everything you are observing there is pure and sacred. And you yourselves are unconsciously converted into purity by the Nature.”—YOSHIO MARKINO, My Idealed John Bulless.
Alpine Flower-fields; it is well that we should at once come to some understanding as to the term “Alpine” and what it is here intended to convey, otherwise it will be open to misinterpretation. Purists in the use of words will be nearer to our present meaning than they who have in mind the modern and general acceptation of the words “Alp” and “Alpine.” The authority of custom has confirmed these words in what, really, is faulty usage. “Alp” really means a mountain pasturage, and its original use, traceable for more than a thousand years, relates to any part of a mountain where the cattle can graze. It does not mean merely the snow-clad summit of some important mountain. Nor does “Alpine” mean that region of a mountain which is above the tree-limit.
The UPPER FIELDS of Champex early in June, with the Grand Combin in the distance.
Strictly, then, Alpine circumstance is circumstance surrounding the mountain pasturages, whether these latter be known popularly as Alpine or as sub-Alpine. To the popular mind—to-day to a great extent amongst even the Swiss themselves—Alpine heights at once suggest what Mr. E. F. Benson calls “white altitudes”; but that should not be the suggestion conveyed here. For present purposes it should be clearly understood that the term “Alpine pastures” is used in its old, embracive sense, and that sub-Alpine pastures are included and, indeed, predominate.
Of course, we may be obliged to bow occasionally to a custom that has so obliterated original meanings, or we shall risk becoming unintelligible; we may from time to time be obliged to use the word “sub-Alpine” for the lower sphere in Alpine circumstance (although, really and truly, the word should suggest circumstance removed from off the Alps—circumstance purely and simply of the plains). We shall therefore do well to accept the definition of “sub-Alpine” given by Dr. Percy Groom in the “General Introduction to Ball’s Alpine Guide,”—“the region of coniferous trees.” Yet, at the same time, it must be clearly understood that our use of the term “Alpine” embraces this sub-Alpine region.
It is absolutely necessary to start with this understanding, because, in talking here—or, for that matter, anywhere—of Alpine plants we shall