182 the lady's country companion. 



drawn from peg to peg ; and an oblong or parallelogram is made by 

 joining two common squares, and taking off the corners, if required. 



Suppose a garden is composed of a bed in the centre for a tree 

 rose with a circle of dwarf roses ; a gravel walk surrounds these ; 

 and there are five heart-shaped beds, which may be planted with 

 Scarlet Pelargoniums, yellow Calceolarias, Petunias white and purple, 

 and tall yellow Mimulus ; and the crescent-shaped beds, which are on 

 grass, may all be planted with different kinds of Verbenas. This 

 plan is also a good design for a rosery, the roses to be planted in 

 the beds, and in the half crescents, which must be on grass, with 

 gravel walks between the grass plots. 



All the beds intended for bulbs and half-hardy plants should be 

 particularly well drained; and the best way of doing this is, to dig 

 out the soil to the depth of two feet or more, and then put in a layer 

 of brick-bats and other rubbish, to the depth of nine inches or a foot. 

 On this should be placed a layer of rich marly soil, in which the 

 bulbs should be planted. Dahlias, hollyhocks, and other tall-growing, 

 showy-flowered plants, should have similar beds prepared for them, 

 but the soil should be made very rich by the addition of the remains 

 of an old hotbed, or some other kind of half-rotten animal manure. 



You will observe, that when I give directions for planting the 

 beds in any of the plans I send you, I merely say what may be done, 

 and not what is absolutely necessary. Indeed, it will be better for 

 you to vary the flowers as much as possible, according to your own 

 taste, provided you take care that the plants are, as nearly as you can 

 contrive it, of the same height, or that they rise gradually, and that 

 you contrast the colours well. The rule in the latter case is, always 

 to put one of the primitive colours (red, blue, and yellow) next 

 another of these colour?, or some colour compounded of the other 

 two ; using white wherever you cannot find any handsome plants of 

 a colour that will suit the bed you want them for. Thus, for ex- 

 ample, if you plant one bed with red, you may plant the next with 

 blue, yellow, green, hair-brown, or white, but never with any shade 

 of purple, as red enters into the composition of that colour ; nor with 

 any shade of reddish brown ; purple, indeed, must always be next 

 yellow, hair-brown, or white, but never next blue, red-brown, or red. 

 Orange will not look well near yellow or red ; and lilac must not 



