Faults in Gardening 



place, and alters everything near ; for- 

 bids the approach of some weaker neigh- 

 bour, and encounters the thrust of some 

 stronger one in its turn. When plants 

 are made movable their personality is 

 half destroyed, and by confining attention 

 to them exclusively at the time of flower- 

 ing, we complete the mischief. The plant 

 is never old, never young ; in fact, it de- 

 generates from a plant into a coloured 

 ornament. Look at a Scarlet Geranium, 

 as you sometimes see it in a greenhouse, 

 with long woody stems continuing from 

 year to year ; it may be somewhat un- 

 tidy, but it can make you love it, and 

 can well bear comparison in this respect 

 with the more brilliant offslips of the 

 border. And cannot you see how in 

 these show-beds all hope is taken away ? 

 If covered with spring flowers, these are 

 all in bloom together. Of course we 

 know that there are summer flowers to 

 follow, but they do not stand full of 

 radiant promise amongst the earlier ones, 

 to please us by the contrast. They have 

 not yet been put in. How hopeless and 

 artificial, how unlike Nature, is all this ! 

 Nature, which keeps us in perpetual ex- 

 pectation, in literally unbroken round, 

 from year's beginning to year's end. I 

 113 H 



