The Winning Designs 



given to the colour question. Don't think that your 

 ideas in the autumn or spring will prove entirely suc- 

 cessful when the flowering period arrives ; it will take 

 several years of careful revision to get a correct 

 arrangement. Don't expect too much the first year. 



Now you may argue that any effects so difficult to 

 obtain, and with the many adverse circumstances aris- 

 ing in the creation of them, are scarcely worth the 

 trouble involved. Is anything that is worth anything 

 obtained in this world without trouble ? I assure you 

 that having once achieved something in the way of 

 success in the direction I have endeavoured to point 

 out, you will lose all appreciation of the heterogeneous 

 medleys we have become accustomed to under the 

 designation of " herbaceous borders." 



There are other points in the arranging of such a 

 border to be remembered, and one is its contours. 

 There should be no rigid lines or rows of any one sub- 

 ject therein, but throughout the effect must be undu- 

 lating and broken to use a simple illustration, it would 

 be an arrangement of hills and valleys. The colour 

 is always brought right down to the edge of the border, 

 and the arrangement of plants is such that frequently 

 back position colours are seen through light masses 

 of flower or foliage in the foreground. It is a mistake 

 to so arrange all the plants that they slope rigidly 

 down from back to front. Try and get a little of the 

 bouquet effects into your borders. One other point 

 and I have done, it is the edge, or front row, planting. 

 Now this is, in my opinion, the most neglected portion 

 of the average border, and far too frequently I come 

 across rich masses of colour in the background whilst 



