BORDERS OF HARDY FLOWERS. 87 



and Snowdrops are leading into the border without any break. So I believe, and 

 I think many others will believe by and by, that every bulbous plant ought to be 

 grown in combination with something else, as Amaryllis Belladonna, for instance, 

 which I plant with Arum italicum pictum. In spring the Arum comes up 

 extremely early and its leaves protect the far more delicate leaves of the Amaryllis 

 till they are growing freely and the Arum dies down. The ground is surfaced 

 with Violets, so that the Belladonnas are now coming into bloom, not with the 

 bare ground but with a setting of Violet leaves in beautiful contrast with their 

 pink blossoms. Christmas Roses of all kinds would probably be a more beautiful 

 setting still, but the Belladonnas want a good deal of summer drying up, which 

 the Hellebores could not stand so well. 



We can never go back to the mixed border of our ancestors ; we have 

 been spoilt for such blank, flowerless spaces as they had by the gorgeousness of 

 bedding out. But we have now a wealth of hardy plants, especially bulbs, which 

 they never had, and this combination of bulbous plants and herbaceous plants 

 will certainly lead to a preparation of the borders which has been hardly dreamt 

 •of by people who do not care what they spend on tropical flowers ; for it seems to 

 be forgotten that we have Irises as big as a plate and Lilies as tall as a tree, all 

 hardy and requiring little attention when once they have been properly planted. 

 The time that used to be spent year after year in digging acres of borders might 

 now be spent in properly making or re-making a few yards of border, till the 

 whole outdoor borders are as exactly suited for the growth of plants to the utter- 

 most perfection — as many as possible being put in the given space — as the 

 borders of a large conservatory. It is in such a border as this that we attain the 

 utmost variety, unceasingly beautiful, every yard different, every week varying, 

 holding on its surface at least three times the value of plant life and successional 

 plant beauty of any ordinary garden. The chief enemy to the system is the slug ; 

 but while the Belladonna Delphinium, which is usually half eaten by slugs in most 

 gardens, grows 6 feet high with me, I am not going to give up my system. 



The way so well described by Mr. F. Miles, and which he carried 

 out admirably in his father's garden at Bingham — one of the few really 

 lovely mixed borders I have seen — is to some extent that carried 

 out in many pretty cottage gardens, owing to the plots being stored 

 with all sorts of hardy flowers ; those are the cottage gardens where 

 one often sees a charming succession of flowers and no bare ground. 



One of the prettiest garden borders I know is against a small 

 house. Instead of the walk coming near the windows, a bed of 

 choice shrubs, varying from 9 feet to 15 feet in width, is against the 

 house. Nothing in this border grows high enough to intercept the 

 view out of the windows on the ground floor, from which were seen 

 the flowers of the border and a green lawn beyond. Among the shrubs 

 were tall Evening Primroses, and Lilies, and Meadow Sweets, and 

 tall blue Larkspurs, which after the early shrubs have flowered bloom 

 above them. The ground is always furnished, and the effect is good, 

 even in winter. 



Evergreen Borders of Hardy Flowers. — The plants of the 

 older kind of mixed border were — like the Grasses of the meadows of 

 the northern world — stricken to the earth by winter, and the border 



