28 GARDENING FOR BEGINNERS 



considerations that will be a guide to the choice of plants to 

 use. The first and most obvious is that the plant must be in 

 itself handsome and somewhat showy. The next and one of 

 the most important, is that it should remain a good while in 

 flower. Plants that are in flower a few days only and then are 

 done are of little use in the mixed border, unless their foliage 

 is unusually handsome and persistent, in which case this is so 

 valuable a quality that it may redeem the plant. 



The choice of kinds being decided on, the way in which 

 they are arranged then becomes the matter of chief import- 

 ance. It seems a natural arrangement to use the creeping 

 and short-growing plants in front, and the next in stature 

 behind them, and the tall ones at the back. This is obviously 

 a good general rule, but if not varied with judicious excep- 

 tions the result will be very monotonous. Now and then 

 some of the tall backward groups should break forward. 

 Think of the way in which the lateral spurs of a mountain 

 chain descends into the valley or plain. They all do come 

 down to the level, but in how varied and beautiful a way. 

 Think of this and then think of the dull and ugly slope of a 

 slate roof, and then think of your border and apply the 

 lesson. 



Then try and get hold of some definite scheme of colour- 

 ing in order to get richness and brilliancy with dignity. It 

 saves much trouble and puzzling at planting-time to have a 

 regular scheme of simple progression of colour from end to 

 end, so that if you have a yellow-flowered thing to plant you 

 put it in the yellow place and so on. In no way can you get 

 so much real power of colour, by which is meant strength, 

 richness, and brilliancy, as by beginning very quietly at the 

 ends of the borders with cool bluish foliage and flowers of 

 tender colouring, white, pale blue, and palest sulphur yellow, 

 and even with these palest pink, beginning quite piano, then 

 feeling the way to full, and from that to stronger yellows ; 

 then by a gradual crescendo to rich orange, and from that to 

 \hzforte ^\\di fortissimo of scarlets and strong blood-crimsons, 

 and then again descending in the scale of strength to the pale 

 and tender colouring. 



In other parts of the garden you may have incidents of 

 brilliant contrast, which are especially desirable in the case of 

 strong blue flowers, but in the mixed border the way of 

 having the rich and brilliant harmony approached by more 

 delicate colouring can scarcely be improved upon, and so 

 only can the vice of garish vulgarity be avoided. 



Plants of the same colouring are intergrouped so that the 

 red group, whether early or late, is always a red group, and 



