BEDDING PLANTS 147 



effects, seems to be entirely lost sight of. That there are 

 such things as open pieces of low planting, and masses 

 of higher planting, clustered around single points of 

 tallest effect in a word, that the sky line must be consid- 

 ered is generally understood when applied to an ordinary 

 landscape; but how few think of applying the same 

 principle of arrangement to a small cluster of even a 

 single flower-bed of moderate size. And yet all land- 

 scape gardening, to be good art, should deal with princi- 

 ples, and the principles should operate in every phase of 

 the work, whether it be in a symphony of grass, herba- 

 ceous plants, shrubs and trees, or in one of alternan- 

 theras, coleuses, geraniums, acalyphas, cannas, or musas. 

 Let us consider for a moment a good example. It 

 might consist, for instance, of a grass bank in front of 

 a house, and be bounded on all other sides by walks, or a 

 great gravel space. Massed back against the house would 

 come great clusters of cannas, like small trees, and these 

 different kinds of cannas would have a rounded outline, a 

 sky line as it were, that would be simple and easy and 

 graceful, and at the same time points and clusters of 

 them would run forward among broad plantations of 

 geraniums, with their sky line further accentuated by the 

 presence of higher color, and growth of brilliant red 

 acalyphas, the leaves of which are smaller than the 

 cannas and larger than the geraniums. Outside of the 

 geraniums would come irregular borders of yellow 

 f eatherf ews, nasturtiums, or the charming alternantheras, 

 which grow only a little higher than the shorn grass is 

 allowed to get ; and out two or three feet into the gen- 

 eral expanse of the turf little clusters of the rich-looking 

 acalyphas would be allowed to wander, in order to pro- 

 long the effect of some of the chords of color that give 



