144 A BOOK ABOUT THE GARDEN. 



to spare, there let us have the bedding-out system, 

 providing always that this space shall be occupied 

 not only in summer but in spring. No part of a 

 flower-garden should consist of brown earth during 

 those eight months of the year in which our climate 

 permits, and we gardeners can provide, a covering of 

 flower and leaf. 



There are three seasons and three systems of 

 bedding-out, the winter, the spring, and the sum- 

 mer. 



If we regard winter bedding-out under the most 

 auspicious circumstances, when the atmosphere ex- 

 hilarates, and our digestion is good, and our debts 

 are few, we may possibly derive from it about as 

 much amusement as from a third or fourth-rate 

 farce ; but if we criticise it severely after unpleasant 

 letters, or a pill, or when the wind is in the east, we 

 can only speak of it as the Attorney-General spoke of 

 the Tichborne Claimant, and denounce it as an im- 

 postor, a humbug, and a sham. Beds of baby ever- 

 greens, new-born hollies, infant aucubas, tiny junipers, 

 and the like, edged with variegated ivies, arabis, &c., 

 with most of the variegation washed and frozen out 

 of them these, as they peep out of the snow like a 

 lot of black pins in a white pincushion, evoke the 

 gardener's ire, not only as an insult to his art, but as 

 the abortive attempt of an insatiate greediness to get 

 more than generous Nature will give. For my own 

 part, I can only think of two exceptional cases in 

 which these feeble failures, dignified by the name of 

 winter bedding-out, might be benevolently excused. 

 They might be introduced into the garden of a retired 



