1 88 1.] FLOWER- GARDENING. 73 



There is no use talking about doing without staking in the hardy- 

 herbaceous garden, unless we, at the same time, do without ''the cream" 

 of hardy herbaceous plants. "Order and neatness" at all seasons 

 are the chief charms of a " fair garden ; " and order and neatness 

 cannot be maintained by going over the beds and borders '' about four 

 times" during the summer season, not even in the case where "hardy 

 plants exclusively " are planted. To keep borders or beds of hardy 

 herbaceous plants in an enjoyable condition, they will need going 

 over at least once a-fortnight, from March to October ; and if they get 

 a little tidying up once a-week during that time, they will look all the 

 better for it. It is not quite clear to me what the opponents of the 

 bedding-out system are finding fault with in particular. Do they 

 object to the bedding-out or massing system as a system of arranging 

 plants of any kind ? Or is their objection only to employing half- 

 hardy plants out of doors in the summer season 1 If their quarrel is 

 with the massing system, whether the plants be hardy or half-hardy, 

 or a combination of both, then I venture to say that by no other sys- 

 tem can so grand a display, as a whole, be produced, and, at the same 

 time, the individual or special characteristics of the various plants 

 employed be preserved. In the mixed or promiscuous system of 

 arrangement, the special characters of individual classes are lost in 

 the mass when the beds or borders are looked at from a little 

 distance. 



If the objection is mainly directed against the employment of half- 

 hardy flowering and ornamental-foliaged plants, then I ask. In what 

 way is the flower-gardening of the present time superior to that of 

 forty years ago, if not in the use of suitable members, in judicious 

 numbers, of this class of plants 1 Was it not by the employment of the 

 class of plants just referred to that flower-gardening was got out of the 

 groove in which it had moved for generations previous to their intro- 

 duction to the beds and borders? and does not their presence give 

 life and beauty to the flower-garden during the summer and autumn 

 months, that is unattainable by the use of hardy herbaceous plants 

 alone 1 It is not, however, by employing tender, and excluding hardy 

 plants, or vice versd, that the most interesting and beautiful display of 

 flowers can be maintained in the flower-garden the year through, but 

 by the employment of suitable members of both sections arranged in 

 the bedding-out or massing style. Some practitioners, however, are 

 so extreme in their ideas, that to pursue a middle course in anything 

 is highly distasteful to them. Hence, in the matter of flower-garden- 

 ing, if their idea for the time being is in favour of tender plants, those 

 of a hardy nature are rigorously excluded from their arrangements. 

 Borders, hundreds of feet long.by tens of feet broad, are bedded out 

 year after year with tender plants, and these only. The pattern may 

 be changed from year to year — one year the panel, another the ribbon, 

 or it may be the carpet or cushion style is selected,— but whatever 



