n8 THE BOOK OF THE SWEET PEA 



effect is to be obtained. When the bowl is large, it 

 is so easy to overdo the arrangement of the flowers. 



With Sweet Peas on long stems and twelve inches 

 may be considered a very moderate length now a days 

 it should be quite an easy matter to arrange a bowl 

 of Sweet Peas that will make a display fully eighteen 

 inches in diameter, and what a handsome picture this 

 should be ! Large bowls must have wire supports or 

 some other contrivance placed therein, if lightness in the 

 disposition of the flowers is to be brought into effect. 

 There is always a tendency to use too many flowers, 

 in consequence of which a heavy and inartistic effect 

 is created. In some of the smaller bowls, green moss 

 placed therein will enable the decorator to adjust the 

 Sweet Peas in position very quickly, and a prettier 

 picture be brought into being as a consequence. Small 

 silver vases and bowls, in which are invariably placed 

 blue or other coloured glasses to hold water, are 

 especially dainty when treated in the manner we have 

 just described ; their uses are many. 



Hand-baskets for drawing-room decoration, fireplaces, 

 and for exhibition, are always interesting floral pictures. 

 In competitions it is essential that the handle be available, 

 and that the basket itself be light. Many prizes have 

 been lost because the exhibitor has filled his basket 

 with sand or some other heavy substance. The simplest 

 arrangement known to ourselves is that of filling the 

 basket with nice, fresh green moss, and inserting therein 

 a sufficient number of green-painted tubes, or rather 

 cones, each of which will hold a supply of water to keep 

 the flowers fresh. The pointed end of the cones may 

 be easily adjusted in the moss, and if they be arranged in 

 varying heights, the disposition of the Sweet Peas in 

 them artistically becomes a matter of comparative ease. 



Sweet Pea haulm may be affixed to the handle, the 

 former, of course, being placed in the cones of water to 



