ROSE GARDENS 97 



The finishing touch, however, in the new type of rose garden is 

 supplied by the carpeting plants, which not only hide the bare earth 

 but give a second crop of flowers from the same ground. Although 

 there is an astonishing variety of them in Mr. Robinson's garden, 

 the main effects are three. The showiest is that of pansies and 

 violas. Pansies have bigger flowers and a wider range of col- 

 ours but a shorter season of bloom, and they have to be raised anew 

 each year from expensive seed. In America they will bloom freely 

 only in the spring. Violas, which are also called "tufted pansies," 

 make a much neater carpet, bloom all summer (except for a fort- 

 night's enforced rest), and are more nearly perennial, so that when 

 you find a variety to your liking you can propagate by division the 

 identical thing you like best. Elsewhere in England I saw the 

 rose-and-pansy idea carried out on a gigantic scale seven 

 thousand roses and eighty thousand violas but I am sure that 

 Mr. Robinson would not have enjoyed it. Like every true artist 

 he believes that formulas tend to kill spontaneity and imagination. 

 He abhors carrying out any gardening idea (even his own) to 

 its logical conclusion. Apparently he believes that perfection of 

 detail inevitably suggests straining after effect, whereas a garden 

 should always be easy, graceful, and unconcerned. 



The most exquisite effect under roses is the lace work made by 

 myriads of minute, starry, white flowers, especially the saxifrages, 

 which make mossy cushions of foliage. At first I despaired of our 

 ever getting this effect in rose beds. Certainly our summers are 

 too hot and dry for saxifrages. But the stonecrops or sedums are 

 obviously resisters of heat and drought, and that whole genus 

 (except the coarse, tall kinds) ought to be studied from this point 

 of view. 



But the most useful effect, perhaps, among the carpeters of 



