248 Landscape Gardening 



"Our outward life requires them not - 



Then wherefore had they birth? 

 To minister delight to man, 

 To beautify the earth. 



; 'To comfort man, to whisper hope 



Whene'er his faith is dim; 

 For who so careth for the flowers, 

 Will much more care for him!" 



Now, there are many genuine lovers of flowers who have 

 attempted to make flower gardens - - in the simplicity of 

 their hearts believing it to be the easiest thing in the world 

 to arrange so many beautiful annuals and perennials into 

 "a living knot of wonders" -who have quite failed in 

 realizing all that they conceived of and fairly expected 

 when they first set about it. It is easy enough to draw 

 upon paper a pleasing plan of a flower garden, whether in 

 the geometric, or the natural, or the "gardenesque" style, 

 that shall satisfy the eye of the beholder. But it is far 

 more difficult to plant and arrange a garden of this kind in 

 such a way as to afford a constant succession of beauty, 

 both in blossom and leaf. Indeed, among the hundreds of 

 avowed flower-gardens which we have seen in different 

 parts of the country, public and private, we cannot name 

 half-a-dozen which are in any considerable degree satis- 

 factory. 



The two leading faults in all our flower gardens, are the 

 want of proper selection in the plants themselves, and a 

 faulty arrangement, by which as much surface of bare soil 

 meets the eye as is clothed with verdure and blossoms. 



Regarding the first effect, it seems to us that the entire 

 beauty of a flower garden almost depends upon it. How- 

 ever elegant or striking may be the design of a garden, that 

 design is made poor or valueless, when it is badly planted 

 so as to conceal its merits, or filled with a selection of un- 

 suitable plants, which, from their coarse or ragged habit of 

 growth, or their remaining in bloom but a short time, give 

 the whole a confused and meagre effect. A flower garden, 

 deserving the name, should, if possible, be as rich as a piece 



