100 THE GARDENER. [March 



ing of these plants can never do full justice to their own beautiful 

 outline. To mass such plants as are now referred to, hides their beauty 

 to a great extent, and would not be much less chargeable with the same 

 evils complained of in massing flowering-plants. They can exhibit 

 their peculiar grace and beauty of outline only when set in bold relief 

 to plants of different habit and of dwarfer stature than themselves. 

 There can scarcely be a doubt that more of an artist's skill is required 

 to carry out this style of planting effectively, than has been brought 

 into play by most of the colour massing that has yet been attempted. 

 It not only involves the cultivated arrangement of colours, but, what is 

 of most importance in this instance, the arrangement of outline also. 



Although a great deal has been said about copying nature as the 

 desirable style, it is our impression that it is not easy to take up the 

 free and careless-looking ways of nature, and to apply them amidst the 

 formal outlines and surfaces forced upon us in the majority of gardens. 

 It may not be unjustly said of some attempts to copy nature, that they 

 are a sad burlesque and libel on the unerring hand that guides nature 

 in all its ways. "We think a garden should be a garden, and not a 

 glade or copse ; and think it is about as seemly and appropriate to 

 catch the clodhopper in his "high-lows," with hands like legs of mutton, 

 and send him to cope with courtiers, as it is to fix the locality of the 

 Rhubarb-and-Burdock style of plants where some would have them. 

 Most gardens are surrounded with plenty of nature's inimitable arrange- 

 ments and selections of plant life; and for the sake of variety we 

 want something different inside our gardens, to mingle its beauties 

 appropriately with the smooth velvety sward of green grass, the glit- 

 tering walk, the statue, and the vase, and that shall at the same time 

 relieve the vapid tameness to which at the outset we have referred. 



It is our opinion that, to work out graceful and picturesque effects, 

 forms and combinations of beds different from those generally met 

 with in flower-gardens are not only desirable but indispensably 

 necessary. Oblong, and all beds approaching that shape, cannot be 

 considered well adapted for the style of grouping which it is our present 

 object to illustrate. Circular beds are capable of being made interest- 

 ing, but still not in themselves sufficiently removed from what may be 

 termed tameness to meet the want. The plate, which has been engraved 

 from a photograph, will do more towards illustrating what we want 

 to be at, perhaps, than much writing. The body of the bed is 

 what is sometimes contradictorily described as a hollow square, ter- 

 minating, with a sweep, into a circle at each of its corners. The whole 

 bed is considerably raised above the ground-level, and its surface is 

 shaped to correspond with its ground -plan. The four circles are 

 raised sphere-shaped, and from their junction with the body of the 



