94 BEAUTIFUL FLOWERS 



Any change which causes so exquisite a flower as the show 

 Auricula to decline seems, on the face of it, to be for the worse ; 

 but we have to take a broad view of the question of public taste 

 as it affects flowers. Laced Pinks, green-edged Auriculas, and 

 Bizarre Tulips have declined, not because floral taste has grown 

 coarser, and is unable to appreciate them, but because ideas of 

 flower gardening have grown better. The flowers named have 

 lost their place because they do not serve the purpose of modern 

 flower gardening. The same florist who specialised Auriculas 

 (which he probably did in a frame ground in a sacred corner of 

 the garden) filled his beds and borders with Zonal Geraniums. 

 He was not a flower gardener in the modern sense at all. He 

 did not study flower gardening as it is studied nowadays, and 

 consequently he did not understand it. He knew a great deal 

 about the individual wants of one particular flower, and, pan 

 passu, he thought that he knew everything there was to know 

 about all plants, and surveyed the ignorant outer world with a 

 benign tolerance. 



Paeonies serve the purpose of modern flower gardeners that 

 is, of getting beautiful and continuous colour effects admirably. 

 The herbaceous species begin their good work from the very first, 

 because the shoots which push through the ground in spring 

 come with rich tints of chrome, and red, and brown. At a little 

 distance a bed of Paeonies reminds the observer of a bed of hard- 

 pruned Tea Roses when its shoots begin to open out under the 

 genial influence of a kindly spring sun. There is the same soft, 

 tender glow of colour a few inches above the earth, gradually 

 spreading and deepening as the days pass. The illusion is at 

 once so perfect and so beautiful that the flower-lover almost wants 

 it to linger, even at the cost of losing the flowers. 



When the Paeonies have attained to their full dimensions (and 

 in rich, fertile soil well-established plants may spread five or six 

 feet) the Tea Rose resemblance will, of course, have completely 



