INTRODUCTION. XXV 



cannot fail to extend the enjoyments of the owners of 

 gardens, and remove the too well grounded complaint 

 so frequently urged at present of a brief repletion and 

 lengthened barrenness of beauty in the flower-garden. 



Their Value in Mixed Borders. — Although it is no part 

 of the object of this book either to recommend or con- 

 demn styles of planting, it may not be amiss here to 

 advert slightly to some of the advantages that may be 

 gained in any garden, large or small, by the adoption of 

 the mixed system to a greater or less extent. The ad- 

 vantages of this system will be limited or extended just 

 as the materials used in it are numerous and varied, or 

 the reverse. It would certainly be no improvement on 

 the massing system, were it carried out by means of the 

 same plants used in it. But the mixed style admits of 

 the employment of any judicious amount of variety both 

 of colour and form, and every feature that constitutes 

 individuality in plants, and the flowers of all seasons are 

 indispensable also in the practice of it. Thus spring, 

 summer, and autumn flower-gardening may be carried 

 on in the same place; and the largest number of the sub- 

 jects being both hardy and of perennial duration, an 

 extended enjoyment of flowers may be obtained at very 

 little increase of labour and cost, even where it may be 

 adopted as an adjunct to the massing system, or in any 

 other way, as a relieving feature or department in the 

 same establishment. In other cases where the strain and 

 demands made on indoor departments and labour by the 

 expensive routine of *' bedding-out " are felt to be op- 

 pressive, some curtailment of the extent of the massing 

 system might be made without any decrease in the inte- 

 rest of the flower-garden, but rather the reverse, by the 



