12 HARDY FLOWERS. 



course of our natural lives and the lives of those who come 

 after us. 



No. 1. First, then, for a noble circular bed in an isolated place, 

 say on some little glade of grass where there is a recess in a shrub- 

 bery, and where you perhaps never thought of putting anything. 

 Have a bed thoroughly well prepared in the first instance, say 8 ft., 

 10 ft., or 12 ft. wide, according to the size of your place, or the 

 nook in which you plant. What I mean by well prepared is, that 

 the soil should be rich, free, well drained, and 3 ft. deep, if possible. 

 Place a good plant of the very tall and late-flowering Tritoma 

 grandis, and then around it a circle of the excellent and somewhat 

 smaller T. glaucescens. Follow that with a ring of the beautiful 

 white Anemone Honorine Jobert and the showy and splendid 

 Rudbeckia Newmanni, mixed plant for plant ; and outside of that 

 again place a circle of the fine herbaceous Sedum spectabile (sold 

 and known as S. fabaria). This Sedum will form a grand edge to 

 the bed, and flowers, like its companions, finely in autumn j while im- 

 mediately outside of it, and between it and the grass, might be 

 planted a line of Snowdrops, or Scilla bifolia, or both mixed. These 

 would flower, ripen their leaves, and perish before the stronger 

 margins started up. The above would form a grand autumn bed, 

 and a noble object from any point of view its aspect all through 

 the spring and early summer being fresh, healthy, and in every way 

 unobjectionable* 



No. 2. This shall be a grand bed of Lilies. Unhappily, the fine 

 hardy kinds of Lilies are anything but as plentiful as they should 

 be, though in a free rich soil they increase readily enough. Few 

 may have them sufficiently plentiful for some time to make beds of 

 them, but when once people know how truly fine they are when 

 seen well-arranged in a large bed in an isolated place, they will 

 hardly rest content without such glorious garden ornaments. With 

 such kinds as Lilium testaceum and tigrinum Fortunei in the centre, 

 surrounded by the queenly candidum, burnished croceum, spotted 

 canadense, pomponium, colchicum, vivid chalcedonicum, and 

 gradually worked down to the edge with dwarf but beautiful kinds 

 like eximium, longiflorum, and tenuifolium, a large circular or 

 oval bed might be made on the grass, in some isolated spot, which, 

 for the highest beauties of colour, form, and fragrance for, in fact, 

 almost every quality by which vegetable beauty endears itself to 

 us could not be surpassed by any arrangement of indoor or out- 



