THE FLORAL WOULD AND GARDEN" GUIDE. G9 



of colour. " Nothing less thau sunshine and Tyrian dye will suit us 

 now." We shall see in 1861 many proofs of advance in respect of 

 colour, not only because there has been great improvement in the 

 variety of bedders, and inferior kinds are going out of cultivation, but 

 because the masters have learnt how to produce decisive, sharp, and 

 expressive tones of colour, and a new element has been gradually 

 worked iu expressly to increase the definiteness and decision of the 

 expressions. Tricolor-leaved geraniums will be seen in plenty every- 

 where, those with golden margins being used iu conjunction with 

 Amarantlius bicolor or A. melancholicus and Coleus Verscliaffelti ; not as 

 makeweights, but as principal elements of the design. The result of 

 the increased use of foliage bedders, which the Floral World was 

 the first to encourage and explain, will in 1861 render the great 

 gardens remarkable for the boldness of their geometric groups, and the 

 gradual approximation of English garden colouring to the purest exam- 

 ples of arabesque. There are no flowering plants known capable of 

 producing so rich and decided an effect in a composition as Amarantlius 

 melancliolicus, Perilla nanlcinensis, or Coleus Verschaffelti, for the simple 

 reason, that the effect of each is of one kind, there is no green ground- 

 work scattered over with flowers, but the same tone from first to last, 

 and on the day they are planted the effect is the same (though less 

 rich) as on the day when they have attained their fullest luxuriance. 

 Every student of colour knows how successful the Egyptians and Assy- 

 rians were in the formation of coloured devices, in which black, red, 

 yellow, and blue played conspicuous parts. Hitherto in the colouring 

 of geometric gardens we have never thought black a necessary agent, 

 possibly because we had no plant suitable to produce it, but we have 

 now perilla, which is sufficiently deep in tone to serve the purpose, and 

 we have also Ajuga reptans purpurescens, which Mr. Salter uses in 

 quantity in the curious exhibitions of foliage bedders which are to be 

 seen every season at his nursery, and the leaves of which are several 

 tones darker than perilla, and for all practical purposes may be con- 

 sidered nearest to black of any bedding plant known. But the ancients, 

 and after them the Moors, accomplished some of their most remarkable 

 successes by means of half tones that we have been equally ignorant ot 

 in gardening. It is only by the use of foliage bedders that we can 

 produce clear breadths of chocolate-brown, ruby, and dull-red, each tone 

 pure and unmixed, for if we had flowers of those colours, they would 

 be next to useless, because the green leaves of the plants producing 

 them would form with such flowers discordant combinations, and aa 

 gardeners we are bound to thank Dame Nature for giving us these 

 colours, pur et simple, in the form of stems and leaves, all coloured 

 alike, instead of in trusses of flowers on green-leaved plants, as she 

 presents us with scarlet, yellow, and others of the spectral series. 



Fashion has for years been tending in the direction of more decided 

 and more classical effects. By the aid of the yellow-leaved geraniums 

 we can now produce those sharp lines of gold, which are so effective to 

 separate reds and blues, to prevent them blending and forming purples ; 

 and where the planter, for the sake of extra brilliancy of effecr, desires 

 to use scarlet or blue in excess, the yellow lines with black lines on 

 each side of them, are the most available and classical mechods of sepa- 



