THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



are removed, and before the spring-flowering plants are put in. 

 Stirring flower-beds creates a wider field of action for the roots, and 

 gives them an opportunity of getting out of the reach of drought in 

 a dry season. 



Coloured Foliage. — The use of coloured and fine-leaved 

 plants in the flower garden has increased, the causes being, the 

 introduction of a number of suitable plants ; and the weather, which 

 has often been so wet that, no sooner have ordinary bedding plants 

 got into full flower, than they have been dashed to pieces by the rain. 

 Hence the desire for plants that would withstand such washings, and 

 yet give bright effects. As regards coloured-foliaged bedding plants 

 in particular, I do not think that if half of the bedding plants used 

 were what are termed foliage plants, it would be out of proportion ; 

 in such coloured foliage I would include the variegated Pelargoniums, 

 together with hardy variegated plants, such as Japanese Honey- 

 suckles, variegated Periwinkles, Ivies, and the hardy Sedums and 

 Saxifrages. The effects to be had from this class of plants combined 

 with variegated and coloured-leaved plants of the tender section, and 

 with graceful-leaved plants, are better than any to be had from 

 flowering plants alone, as they stand all weathers without injury. 

 One of the brightest coloured beds I have ever seen planted in 

 geometrical form for summer effect was composed of the following 

 plants — viz. Sedum acre elegans, creamy white ; Sedum glaucum, gray ; 

 Herniaria glabra, green ; Mesembryanthemum cordifolium variega- 

 tum, light yellow ; and the bright orange and scarlet Alternantheras, 

 all dwarf plants ; the standard or central plants being Grevillea 

 robusta and variegated Abutilons. 



Bedding and Fine-leaved Plants. — There can be no doubt 

 that the use of the freer-growing green and graceful fine-leaved 

 plants has done a great deal of good. In the South of England 

 one may grow a great variety of plants of this kind. A number of 

 greenhouse and even of stove plants may be placed in the open air 

 without injury, and even with benefit to themselves. But some 

 plants put out look sickly all the summer and make no good growth. 

 Others always look well, even in the face of damaging storms. 

 Where the climate is against the tenderer plants, a very good selec- 

 tion may be made from hardy things — from shrubs, plants like the 

 Yucca, or young trees cut down and kept in a single-stemmed state. 

 But there are errors in the system from which these things cannot 

 save us. A geometrical bed is little the less geometrical because we 

 place green-leaved or graceful plants in the middle of it. A more 

 radical alteration is required, and that is the abolition of geometry 

 itself, of formalism and straight lines and of all the hateful gyrations 



