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SELECTION OF FLOWERING PLANTS. 



FOR THE FLOWER GARDEN, AND THE ARRANGEMENT OF 

 THE VARIOUS SORTS ON THE LAWN OR BORDERS.* 



" How exquisitely sweet 

 This rich display of flowers, 

 This airy wild of fragrance, 

 So lovely to the eye, 

 And to the sense so sweet." A ndreinVs Adam. 



"And round about he taught sweet flowers to grow " Spencer. 



"The leading faults in all the flower gardens I have 

 seen, are, the want of a proper selection of kinds, and a 

 very bad mode of arranging them. It makes very little 

 difference how elegant or striking a plan you may have 

 for a flower garden, if that design is badly planted, so as 

 to conceal its merits, or is filled in with a collection of un- 

 suitable kinds that have a coarse, or ragged habit of 

 growth, or remaining in bloom too short a time. 



* This article was written at my request by Mr. Robert Murray, Landscape 

 Gardener, of Waltham, Mass. I have always admired the exquisite taste 

 he has exhibited in the arrangement of the flowering plants and shrubbery, in 

 the garden under his management on the " Gore Farm," as it is called, in Wal- 

 tham, of which he had the sole charge for many years, while it was in the pos- 

 session of the late Hon. Theodore Lyman, and afterwards S. C. Green, Esq. 



For a number of years past, Mr. Murray has devoted himself to the study 

 and practice of landscape gardening, in which profession lie has been eminently 

 successful. Where ornamental grounds are to be laid out, I know of no other 

 person who is better qualified than Mr. Murray to execute the work to the satis- 

 faction of his employer, however refined he may be in his taste on this matter. 

 I have oftentimes been pained to see places beautifully situated by nature, and 

 susceptible of great improvement by artistic skill, almost ruined by the un- 

 fortunate mistake of employing a person without skill or taste in laying it out. 

 Better that the place should have remained in a state of nature, than to have 

 employed'an ignoramus, in such an important work. A work of this sort is a 

 work for an age, and if badly planned and executed, cannot be corrected, with- 

 out much expense and loss of time. Beware then of being " penny wise arid 

 pound foolish." 



