172 STUDIES IN GARDENING 



plants thus, especially the best half-hardy annuals, 

 we shall find them most useful, and we shall avoid 

 the awkward intervals of ugliness inevitable with the 

 ordinary bedding system. There are gardeners who 

 have a nervous fear of growing anything near their 

 Roses, even if they do not grow Roses for show. There- 

 fore, they keep the soil about their Roses bare, with 

 the consequence that their Rose beds look ugly for 

 most of the year. But Rose beds can be covered with 

 low-growing plants without injury to the Roses, if 

 the soil is well fed; and annuals, especially half-hardy 

 annuals, are particularly suited to this purpose, because 

 the soil can be thoroughly enriched before they are 

 planted out and after they are removed, and also be- 

 cause their roots usually have not time to grow deep 

 and thick and to impoverish the ground seriously. 

 Half-hardy annuals can be combined with spring bulbs, 

 such as Tulips, and in such a case bedding, both 

 spring and summer, has a very good reason for its ex- 

 istence. But annuals bedded out in this way must not 

 be too tall or strong-growing, lest they keep light and 

 air from the Roses. Excellent ones for the purpose, 

 both because they are low-growing and because their 

 colours can usually be arranged to harmonize with 

 those of the Roses, are Ageratum, Dianthus Heddewigii, 

 Nemesia in pink and white shades, Phlox Drummondii, 

 and Verbena. No doubt the gardener who shows his 

 Roses is right to grow nothing else near them; he re- 

 gards the Rose, not as a beautiful flowering shrub, but 

 as a flower producing machine. Those for whom the 



