158 STUDIES IN GARDENING 



careful division as soon as they have gone out of 

 flower. By this means they may often be perpetuated 

 and a good stock of plants may be obtained; but 

 division or any kind of disturbance in the autumn 

 usually results in their death. It may seem strange 

 that plants should need such artificial means to keep 

 them in health in gardens, when they flourish in a state 

 of nature without any help except from nature; but 

 it must be remembered that they grow wild only in 

 conditions naturally most favourable to them, and 

 that many of them have very short lives and never 

 reach that perfection which we demand of them in 

 gardens. Nature's chief object is that they should 

 reproduce themselves, and, provided they do this, 

 she is careless what becomes of them afterwards. 

 But in the garden we do not always wish them to re- 

 produce themselves. We may have enough of a par- 

 ticular plant, or we may have a particular variety 

 which will not come true from seed, and we may there- 

 fore wish it to spend its energy in making new growth 

 rather than in ripening seed. The ripening of seed 

 is the most exhausting process that a plant undergoes, 

 and there are many plants that kill or permanently 

 weaken themselves by profuse seed-bearing. Such 

 plants may often be saved from death by the removal 

 of their flowers as soon as they wither; and even true 

 perennials are often much benefited by such removal. 

 There are a great many evergreen plants that soon 

 grow straggling and unkempt if they are never cut 

 back, and the time to cut them back is when they 



