BEDDING PLANTS. 217 



lation of false notes in music. So common, moreover, lias 

 this bad composition grown, that some of the most refined 

 and enlightened spirits among landscape gardeners have 

 declared unqualified war against all color and carpet bed- 

 ding whatsoever. It seems to me, however, that this is 

 a prejudice and a narrow one. 



The reasonable view, the artistic instinct, would be, 

 I am sure, to consider each coleus and geranium as a single 

 beautiful plant and therefore deserving employment in 

 artistically conceived designs and appropriate surround- 

 ings. It is a great mistake to consider the employment of 

 a coleus or geranium as requiring any different general 

 principle of landscape-gardening arrangement from that of 

 shrubs and trees. The coleus is taken up in the fall 

 though there is nothing peculiar in that and new planta- 

 tions of it made in the following spring, but lack of hardi- 

 ness should affect not at all the necessity for applying the 

 artistic principles of landscape gardening to all branches of 

 the art. Color and form are given to the artist to use, 

 whether it be in the shape of a coleus or an elm tree, 

 and it is his business to see that the color and form are 

 arranged in the composition in the most effective, har- 

 monious, and pleasing way. The principles governing their 

 arrangement are, moreover, the same in both cases. 



Now all this is doubtless evident as soon as we give the 

 subject reasonable consideration. Why, then, the prejudice 

 against the use of bedding plants, as evinced by persons 

 of unquestionable taste. It must be mere thoughtlessness; 

 for if they would only think for a moment, they must 

 see that the arrangement of an oval bed of coleuses and 



