THE 



September, 1865. 

 MONOTONY, AND ITS EEMEDY. 



jO 1 ^|Y this time we may hope that the Floral "World has 

 J done something to improve the taste, and enlarge the 

 practice, and multiply the horticultural pleasures of its 

 numerous amateur readers. If it has not done so, it 

 ■will not have been through lack of intention and en- 

 deavour. During its career of eight years, it has in 

 various ways protested against the monotony which 

 too often prevails in private gardens, and it once more 

 touches on this old theme in hope that a few practical 

 ' \f \$f \ remarks may be of value to some of its readers. In the 

 June number was published a paper entitled " Less 

 Colour and more Beauty," in which it was advised that 

 the best of our hardy spring-flowering plants should be used in 

 considerable breadths in the beds which are usually allotted 

 solely to summer-flowering bedding plants. "What is to be said now 

 will be in continuation of the remarks that were made in the June 

 number. It will be observed that nine-tenths of the private gardens 

 in the suburbs of all our great towns are at this season of the year 

 repetitions of each other. This is a lamentable monotony. To be 

 sure the ovals vary in size, and the corkscrews in shape, and the circles 

 in the several relations they bear to squares, crescents, and other 

 devices, as we go from garden to garden ; and in some places yellow 

 governs red, and in others red governs yellow, and in some few again 

 nothing governs. Yet the variety is all on the same plan, and for the 

 greater part is accomplished with the same materials — so much scarlet 

 geranium, so much blue lobelia, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc. Suppose 

 that the combinations are in all cases good— which they are not — still 

 it is the duty of a public writer, at this juncture, to implore his readers 



VOL. Till. — >'0. IX. K 



