FLOWER-GARDENS. 
969 
FLOW ER-GARDENS. 
kinds should be chosen to hang | ought to be in some way or other so 
down the sides of the vessel. Cap- 
tain Mangles, whose taste in orna- 
mental gardening is well known, 
adopts the baskets figs. 19 and 20, 
for suspending from the roof of his 
greenhouse. ‘The baskets are made 
of wire, with pots of earthenware 
or china inside. These baskets are 
Fig. 20.—Flower-Basket. 
alike suitable for the creeping Ce- 
reus, Moneywort, and other com- 
mon plants which produce their 
flowers on hanging stems, as for 
Epiphytes and orchideous plants. 
When the baskets are used for Epi- 
phytes, the wire should generally be 
filled with moss, instead of having a 
pot placed in it. 
FLower-GarDENs embrace a sub- 
ject on which a volume might be 
written without exhausting it; but 
ihe present article will be confined 
jo a few general observations, ap- 
plicable in every case; and to a 
short notice of the different kinds of 
- fower-gardens which have been, or 
are, in most general use. 
All flower-gardens, to have a 
good effect, ought to be symmetri- 
eal; that is, they ought to have a 
centre, which shall appear decided 
and obvious at first sight, and sides ; 
and all the figures or compartments 
mto which the garden is laid out, 
18* 
connected with the centre as not to 
be separable from it, without injur- 
ing the general effect of the garden. 
All the beds and borders ought to 
have one general character of form 
and outline; that is, either curved, 
straight, or composite lines ought 
to prevail. ‘The size of the beds 
ought also never to differ tosuch an 
exten*, as to give the idea of large 
beds and small ones being mixed 
together; and the surface of the 
garden ought to be of the same 
character throughout; that is, it 
ought not to be curvilinear on one 
side of the centre, and flat or an- 
gular on the other. In the planting 
flower-gardens the same attention 
to unity ought to be kept in view. 
One side ought not to be planted 
with tall-growig plants, and the 
other with plants of low growth; nor 
one part with evergreens, whether 
ligneous or herbaceous, and the 
other part with annuals or bulbs. 
Flower-gardens which are intended 
to be ornamental all the year, ought 
to have a large proportion of ever- 
green herbaceous plants distributed 
regularly all over them; such as 
Pinks, Sweet Williams, Thrift, Saxi- 
frages, and intermixed with very low 
evergreen shrubs, such as Heaths, 
Whortleberries, Thyme, Gaulth2ria 
procumbens, and a variety of simi- 
lar plants. Flower-gardens which 
are intended to be chiefly ornamen- 
tal in spring, ought to be rich in 
bulbs and early-flowering shrubs ; 
such as the Mezereon, Cydonia, 
or Py‘rus japonica, Rhododéndron 
datricum atrovirens, Erica herbd- 
cea, G¢.; tnose that are intended 
to be chiefly ornamental in summer, 
should be rich in annuals; and 
those that are to be in perfection in 
autumn, in Dahlias. Flower-gar- 
dens on a large seale never look so 
well as when the spaces between 
the beds are of turf; but those ona 
small scale may have the spaces 
