The China Asters. 



WITH REMARKS UPON FLOWER BEDS. 



It is commonly assumed that may people have no love or appre- 

 ciation of flowers, but it is probably nearer to tlie trutli to say that 

 no person is wholly lacking in this respect. Even those persons 

 who declare that they care nothing for flowers, are generally de- 

 ceived by their dislike of flower-beds and the conventional methods 

 of flower-growing. I know many people who stoutly deny any 

 liking for flowers, but who, nevertheless, are rejoiced with the 

 blossoming of the orchards and the purple bloom of the clover fields^ 

 The fault is not so much with the persons themselves as with the 

 methods of growing and displaying the flowers. 



The greatest fault with our flower growing is the stinginess of it. 

 We grow our flowers as if they were the choicest rarefies, to be 

 coddled in a hotbed or under a bell jar, and then to be exhibited as 

 single specimens in some little pinched and ridiculous hole cut in 

 the turf, or perched upon an ant-hill which some gardener has 

 laboriously heaped upon a lawn, Nature, on the other hand, grows 

 her flowers in the most luxurious abandon, and you can pick 

 an armful without offense. She grows her flowers in earnest, as a 

 man grows a crop of corn. You can revel in the color and the 

 fragrance, and be satisfied. 



The next fault with our flower growing is the flower bed. Now^ 

 nature has no time to make flower beds ; she is busy growing flowers. 

 And, then, if she were given to flower beds, the whole effect would 

 be lost, for she could no longer be luxurious and wanton, and if a 

 flower were picked her whole scheme might be upset. Imagine a 

 geranium bed or a coleus bed, with its wonderful "design," set out 

 into a wood or in a free and open landscape ! Even the birds would 

 laugh at it ! 



What I want to say is that we should grow flowers when we make 

 a flower garden. Have enough of them to make it worth the effort. 



