170 THE HERBACEOUS BORDER 



are among the things that require special vigilance in 

 this respect; whereas lilies and many deep-rooting 

 herbs intensely resent disturbance. The average life- 

 term of different kinds of forest trees has been pretty 

 accurately ascertained; but who shall estimate the 

 duration of a clump of Christmas roses or hepatica ? 

 It is the permanence of such lowly growths, linking one 

 generation of men with another, that imparts a peculiar 

 charm to a herbaceous border of the right sort a 

 charm that vanishes, or is never allowed to settle, under 

 the treatment prevailing in some large gardens. It 

 was the lack of that charm that was fatal to the 

 bedding-out system, which excited the eye, as a showy 

 wall-paper might do, but left the imagination cold. 

 Neither interest nor association could attach to plants 

 that had to be flung on the waste-heap after the first 

 frost; and the sweet-o'-the-year lost much of its delight 

 when every garden was drilled into servile uniformity 

 with a hundred others. Wherefore, when Mr. William 

 Robinson raised the standard of revolt in the early 'seven- 

 ties, an eager band of reformers rallied to it; and now prac- 

 tically every one who takes an understanding share in the 

 ordering of a flower-garden has enlisted in the cause. 



But whereas it is not every owner of a garden who 

 has leisure and knowledge to apply to its care, the 

 arrangement of hardy perennials must be left in many 

 cases to a professional gardener, who, from the very 

 nature of his calling, may instinctively incline to 

 routine. This may account for the fact that herbaceous 

 gardening is threatened, and in some cases has been 

 overtaken, by that very blight of monotony which was 

 the doom of bedding-out. The old system, despite its 



