iSSi.] HERBACEOUS PLANT CONTROVERSY. 177 



can be said of those who have descended so low, and who at the same time 

 attempt to glorify their own special charity ? They certainly do not demand 

 smooth treatment. This writer does his best, and worst, to try and parade 

 what he would fain have it believed is our inconsistency ; and we will now 

 show his spirit of unfairness. 



In reference to the quotation from page 10 of our book, it was applied to 

 what we refer to at pages 3 and 4 in these words: "The elder brethren 

 of our profession who can look back to the introduction of the Dahlia, give us 

 but a poor idea of llower-gardening as it was practised in the first decades of 

 this century. Flower-gardens had then seldom a separate locality devoted to 

 them; and when they had that advantage, they were generally composed 

 of unshapely figures cut out in grass, and arrauged, as the designer fondly 

 but erroneously imagined, after the principles of English gardening, as incul- 

 cated by Wheatley and Uvedale Price. These figures were mostly filled with 

 a miscellaneous assortment of shrubs and herbaceous plants, many of which 

 possessed only botanical interest." And then at page 10 it is said: "A 

 mixture with little regard to selection was the chief object attained, if not 

 the one kept in view." It was to this old style that we applied the sentence 

 our critic distorts from the context. It could not be any other, for no other 

 existed at the time we wrote of. In the 'Gardener' of November last we 

 ai)plied remarks to the same effect: ""Whatever is worth doing is worth 

 doing well ; and it may be taken for granted that no one with any sense 

 of good culture and order in a garden pretends to maintain that the style 

 of hardy mixed flower-borders that were in vogue before bedding-out began 

 would now be tolerated. No doubt, to compare the system to which we 

 have just referred with the bedding-out system, the latter is the more ex- 

 pensive. But to affirm that the bedding-out system is more expensive or 

 laborious than the same area occupied and kept gay from spring till autumn 

 with hardy herbaceous plants in a state of good cultivation is a different 

 matter." Will our readers tell us where the one statement contradicts the 

 other ? Such criticism consists only of a species of unfair quotation that no 

 honourable mind would resort to. It would not have fitted in with the spirit 

 and tactics of the ' Garden' to have gone on and quoted our remarks at pages 

 13, 14, and 15 of our book. 



We now turn to this writer's second quotation and his comments thereon, 

 coupling them with his comments on the use we made of our opportuni- 

 ties at Archerfield in the matter of hardy herbaceous plants. The same 

 remark, as will be seen, applies to both. He is in utter ignorance of the 

 mainspring of our flower-gardening at Archerfield; but that seems best to suit 

 his purpose. When we were engaged to take charge of the gardens at Archer- 

 field, their noble proprietrix gave us only one definite command regarding their 

 management. It was, that the flower-gardening (to which nearly every word 

 we have quoted above in reference to the old hardy system applied) was to be 

 done away with, for the sole reason that the family, having other two or three 

 country seats, were never likely to reside at Archerfield except from early in 

 August till about the middle of November, and that in former years the hardy 

 plants were all out of bloom, withered, and littery-like when the family arrived 

 there. We had the most definite order to inaugurate the bedding system ; and 

 at what expense we shall presently see. We had one season's experience of the 

 old system there, and in every point it tallied with Lady Mary Nisbet Hamil- 

 ton's remarks about it. Her ladyship arrived early in August of that year to 

 find all the herbaceous plants in the long borders in front of the chief range of 



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