CHAP. XV VILLA GARDENING 83 



of the different shades of colour may appropriately fit into back- 

 grounds with the happiest effect. I am offering suggestions rather 

 than laying down rules. I want my readers to think out their 

 own case, with a view to making the most of the rich materials 

 which lie ready to onr hands ; and let no one suppose that hardy 

 plants can be cultivated without trouble. Many of the best and 

 choicest things will leave us if we forget or neglect them, I 

 know from my own experience, and the study of difierent arrange- 

 ments, that a great deal more may be done than has been attempted 

 in most places, where hardy plants are ousting the bedding system 

 again. It is the custom to call them old English flowers, and 

 though they had in the last century, and probably many centuries 

 before, beautiful gardens — for in all ages one of the first things 

 man has done when light has dawned upon him has been to plant a 

 garden — yet it is certain the ancients had no such collections of 

 hardy plants as are now waiting for our use. And this being so, it 

 is all the more incumbent on us to make a good use of border plants, 

 displaying them in various ways. Individual tastes and desires 

 will, of course, have to be considered, for every owner of a garden 

 ought to make his presence felt in it. And if he wishes to grow 

 plants for the purpose of study only, then he will adopt the botanical 

 system of arrangement, grouping them in families, keeping each 

 species separate. Where a really first-rate collection of hardy 

 plants is grown, it is a good plan to have duplicates of the best and 

 choicest things arranged in this fashion in the reserve garden, where 

 they will be always under the eye. Many a choice thing is com- 

 pletely lost through having all the stock planted thickly for effect 

 in the mixed border, or in some conspicuous situation where bare 

 earth would not be tolerated. In planting the herbaceous border, 

 the usual arrangement is to plant the tallest at the back, and 

 then follow with a row a size shorter, and so on till the front is 

 reached. 



I do not find any fault with this arrangement. It is in 

 itself excellent, but it does in time become monotonous ; and if we 

 had more than one border to plant I should say discard the 

 mathematical arrangement and let them break their ranks a little, 

 some of the tall plants coming down towards the front, and others 

 of the low-growing creeping plants retire up the border to the 

 shade and seclusion there afforded them. I have tried this plan, 

 and I can assure my readers the effect is not lost, and the ground 

 is better covered when the tall and short plants are permitted to 

 blend, as they often do in nature. Of course no rules can be laid 

 down for planting a border of this kind. Each jDlanter must use 

 his own taste and judgment, and it is wonderful how interesting 



