The soil surface should be entirely covered with foliage and beneath this and on the underside of the stones and outdoor fountains there should be sufficient moisture for any proper rock plant. If there are spots of bare baked soil, cover with broken peat or coarse sand. In periods of a month without rain, some of the rock plants may become wilted. Either the soil preparation was not carefully done or these are bog plants.

Rebuild the pockets next autumn and shift the plants. Watering with the hose is legally allowable, though not a natural process, but if squirted on too forcibly the water digs up plants and stones and washes away the soil. If the site is really desert-like, and other than Carcti and Sedums are desired, it is simple and effective to install sub-irrigation by means of leaking water pipe or tile during construction.

With the first cool of autumn and moisture of rains, there is quite a display of bloom and much stem growth for next year. After frosts have closed the season, the heavy weeding of perennial pests must be undertaken. Now every piece of weed will have a visible top, and there is no excuse for not getting them wholly and forever removed. Some rock plants will have grown too well by roots or by seed, and these should be thoroughly thinned; others will have too much top and smother their neighbors.

For such cases a big knife should give a severe Dutch cut or a pruning of the tangle. For better bloom the next spring, this cutting should be done in early summer after bloom; but the foliage effect is injured until new growth has come out. Some replanting must be done in the autumn (late August to October), but where winter heaving is severe, it is better to set out in the spring. With a mulch of peat or dry hay, large potted plants will survive any winter safely.

Lastly comes the decision as to winter protection of special coverings. If the plants have good tops or a mulch of peat and sand about the crowns, and construction below is as it should have been, any rock plant will come through the winter safely, if at all hardy in that latitude. No covering at all is easiest and best. It is better to put the plants at the mercy of an open winter than to smother with blankets of hay, leaves, or manure.

None of these fall in the winter on the slopes of Pikes Peak ; yet the mountain plants survive. Those plants which are found to be not hardy should be supplanted by those which are more enduring. Not only are hay and manure certain to rot the plants, but they bring in weed seeds and harbor mice, which chew the plants. A few pieces of evergreen boughs may be laid on exposed spots, but a little coarse sand about the crowns is better.