Tufted Pansies. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 



THE FLOWER GARDEN IN THE HOUSE. 



ONE of the real gains in any flower garden worthy of the name is 

 that we have in it lovely forms and delicate colours for the house, from 

 the dawn of spring with its noble Lenten Roses on sheltered borders, 

 until autumn goes into winter in a mantle of Starworts. Many 

 English and all German and French flower gardens in parterres offer 

 us only Lobelias, and various plant rubbish of purplish or variegated 

 hues, very few of them worth cutting, whereas our real flower garden 

 is a store of Narcissus, Azalea, Rose, Lily, Tulip, and Carnation, and 

 all the fairest things of earth. All we have to care about is placing 

 them in simple ways to show their form as well as colour. Apart 

 from the good plan of having a plot for the culture of any flowers 

 we wish to cut for the house, a true flower garden will yield many 

 flowers worthy of a place on an artist's or any other table for their 

 forms, colour, or fragrance. Many of these, from the Narcissus 

 to the Tea Rose, give flowers so freely that we need not be afraid to 

 cut ; indeed, in many cases, careful cutting prolongs the bloom (as 

 of Roses). Many shrubs we may improve as we cut their branches 

 for the house, for example Winter Sweet, Forsythia, and Lilac. 



It is not merely the first impression of flowers, good as it may be, 

 that we have to think of, but the charms which intimacy gives to 

 many of the nobler flowers some opening and closing before our 



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