THE FLORAL WORLD 



AND 



GARDEN GUIDE. 



APRIT^, 1866. 

 POEMS OF FLOWER-BEDS.— No. II. 



BY ]ME. HOWLETT. 



N" following lip the subject of flower-garden designs, it 

 will be my object to provide suitable receptacles, or 

 places, for the culture of all classes of plants, including 

 the old favourites, which the mania for bedding plants 

 has almost driven out of cultivation, but for which 

 there is happily a reviving disposition to again foster and receive 

 into favour. In this, however, there appears to be some difiiculty. 

 Gardens are laid out in terraces and geometrical parterres, solely 

 with the view to a grand summer display, and very beautiful and 

 artistic such displays are. Nor could I find heart to denounce 

 them; indeed I admire and fully approve them when iised judi- 

 ciously. "Who does not ? But the whole thing turns upon that one 

 point, the judicious and moderate use of these accessories to our 

 garden furnishings ; but like all other good things, they become in 

 inartistic hands too vulgar and common-place to satisfy, and the 

 mind naturally turns for relief to other sources of delight. If 

 " variety is charming," there surely is little charm to be found in 

 many gardens, where every nook and corner is reserved for the well- 

 known lozenges of scarlet, yellow, white, pink, and purple aflorded 

 by a dozen or so varieties of bedding plants. It is the immoderate 

 degree to which the thing haa been carried, and the consequent 

 lack of charm which the garden presents at all times, except for 

 the few weeks in the season, that is producing a reaction, and 

 demands a revival of the cultivation of classes of plants which have 

 for a long time past been in a measure neglected. Consequently, 

 when laying out or making alterations in gardens, it behoves us to 

 make proper arrangemeuts for all classes. Let us have a fair specimen 

 of the glowing parterre with its summer blaze ; also let us have 

 spring flowers, bulbs, half shrubby herbaceous and trailing plants, 

 annuals, biennials, perennials, etc. These latter are subjects which 

 if judiciously planted, will harmonize one with the other, and may 

 be made to constitute the mixed garden. In the subjoined plan 

 the eight large beds in the centre are intended to represent the 



