Retail price list of California bulbs / Carl Purdy

              PURDY'S CALIFORNIA FLOWERING PLANTS
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Rock-Plants for Sunny Rockeries
For sunny rockeries quite a different set of plants are required from those fit for
shaded rocks or fern-beds. Of course one can fill such a rockery with cactus and those-
fleshy semi-tropical things so much affected in southern California, but such rockeries
soon become monotonous.
In the first place, the rockery should be built with the rocks slanting inward so that
moisture will reach deeply and deep-rooting rock-plants can get a foothold. The soil!
should be extra good, and worked in to a depth of at least 18 inches. Such a rockery
should be built to afford a great many pockets and little beds a few feet across. For this
the following are a few of the good plants to use:
Alyssum, both saxatile and the annual, Arabis alpina; Aquilegias for early bloom;
the low Bellflowers; the tufted Pinks are especially good; Gazanias, kept within close
bounds; Heucheras, Iris pumila, Lychnis Haageana, are very fine; Sun Cups, OEnothera
Arendsii, Penstemons in natives; Plumbago Larpentae, Kenilworth Ivy, Jacob's Ladder kept down well; the tufted Saxifragas, Sedums of the lower sorts, Cotyledons,.
Cerastium tomentosum, Aubrietias are especially fine; Wallflowers starved to low shrubs;
Lewisias; Convolvulus Mauritanica, which grows in low tufts; Coreopsis starved; Coto-
neaster, the creeping sort with red berries; Geranium sanguineum, Geums, creeping
Gypsophilas; Iberis Gibraltarica is especially fine; Linum Lewisii, Forget-me-nots,
Othonna Capensis kept down, make a very fine colony for such places.
These are only a few of the fine things with which a sunny rockwork can be brightened. The rock-gardens and so-called Alpine gardens, for which Englishmen are now
spending fortunes, are filled with such plants as these and other like sorts, and we can
do the same thing better here.
There are also some very fine, compact shrubs for such rockeries, and among them
for California use none are finer than the Cistus, or Rock Roses, and the flat-growing;
Cotoneasters.  These are offered in my shrub and tree list, to be had on application.
A garden of perennials is a joy during the greater part of the year. A border like this
will give color from early spring to late autumn and furnish an abundance of blooms for
cutting.