24 THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



This may be well enough ; but who wants 

 flower-beds to look like carpets ? They may 

 strike you at first as being ingenious, and even 

 pretty, but the feeling is at once followed 

 by a sense of their essential debasement as 

 regards gardening. No flower is permitted, and 

 the glorification of stonecrops and houseleeks 

 is the chief result. But indeed the geometrical 

 figures of the carpet-bedding are not the worst. 

 The gardeners are now trying their skill in 

 designs on their carpet-beds, and names, mot- 

 toes, coats of arms, and other frivolities, are 

 becoming common. The most stupid follies of 

 the Topiarian age were graceful and sensible 

 compared to this. It is less childish to trim 

 a yew-tree into a peacock than to arrange your 

 sedums and alternantheras to look like animals 

 on a badly-woven carpet. Nor has the absurdity 

 even the merit of being original. It is really 

 an old French invention, and about the time of 

 Henry IV. the gardens at Fontainebleau and 

 Chantilly were known for their quaint devices 

 in flowers, their ships, armorial bearings, and 



