WINTER-FURNISHING FLOWER BEDS. 107 



garden, should furnisli their gardeners with some hundreds of 

 these potted evergreens from a nursery ; they may be had 

 reasonably at any time of the year — Arborvitae, red cedar, six- 

 inch firs, hollies, berberries, striped alaternus, yews, laurus- 

 tinus, box, green and variegated — any, or all may be had, but 

 they must be planted uniformly, that the fig-uxe may be always 

 correctly balanced, as it were, and complete order preserved. 



In borders, and large beds not uniform, the shrubs may be 

 larger, and they may be mixed without offending the eye, be- 

 cause there is no order to preserve; but if there be many 

 beds, they will look better with different coloured foliage from 

 one another, but all of a sort in the bed ; this gives a much 

 better contrast than mixing them ; but if a bed stand by 

 itseb^ the mixture is desirable. Of course there must be plants 

 of different sizes, and the pots must be adapted to the plants, 

 and the mode of keeping them and pruning them must be 

 regularly attended to. As stunted growth, so that it be 

 healthy, is desbable in these plants, and as they make theil* 

 growth about the time they are removed from the beds, let 

 those that wUl bear it be pruned in close before they make 

 their shoots at all, for when the new growth is made on the 

 tree or shrub it is too late. Of course, the fii^s, cedars, and 

 Arborviti3es ^ill not bear the knife ; but when small and 

 potted, they do not make much growth, and therefore may do 

 several years before they grow too large. All the summer 

 months these potted plants should be plunged in a bed not 

 too much exposed to the sun, and some attention must be 

 paid to the watering in the absence of rain, and when they 

 are large enough to fill the pots they will actually require 

 watering even iii wet weather. 



We have hitherto only mentioned the cheapest description 

 of plants, but there might be plants of Andromeda floribunda 

 introduced to some of the smaller beds that would not require 

 too many, and they look very chaste and beautiful the whole 

 ■winter : their dark green foliage contrasting well with their 

 branching spikes of pearly bloom, which look ornamental 

 from the time they set their buds until they are out of flower 

 again. 



This almost leads, us to the general system of pot culture 

 for geometrical gardens, which plan is a little more trouble- 

 some, but far superior to any other for gardens of this class, 

 and all ornamental and fancy beds, on account of the great 



