Faults in Gardening 



want of them ? Or can you turn from 

 these simple plots, unstudied for effect, 

 to the showy, unvaried brilliancy of the 

 modern border, and find that you miss 

 nothing there? Do not the plants seem 

 comparatively wanting in interest ? Do 

 they not seem to be individually less dear, 

 to hold you with a lighter grasp? Now 

 what can be the reason of this ? The old 

 gardeners, we are told, thought little of 

 beauty, and chiefly of genera and species. 

 Why, then, should the poet find that, with 

 all its faults, the old garden stirs him in 

 those depths which the modern one can 

 seldom reach? This defect is far less 

 conspicuous in the larger hothouses and 

 greenhouses, and I am convinced that it 

 depends almost wholly on false principles 

 of arrangement. We should feel a great 

 difference if we saw the plants grow wild. 

 I will give an illustration of this. Every- 

 body knows the little blue annual Lobelia. 

 It is a pretty flower ; but, as the gardeners 

 place it in their show-beds, it seems as 

 cold and unlovable as if it was wrought 

 out of steel. Yet should we ever think 

 it so if we found it rising stem by stem 

 amongst the looser grass, in such meadows 

 as the Harebell, Milkwort, or Eyebright 

 (Eupkrasia) will often enter, or perhaps in 

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