CHAPTER XXIV 

 ENGLAND'S NEW KIND OF FLOWER BED 



It harmonizes with our climate better than our present plan, costs 

 less, is attractive two months longer every year and abolishes 

 annual digging and replanting 



IF THERE is any one thing on which we Americans pride 

 ourselves it is on being "up-to-date," or at least pro- 

 gressive, yet the style of flower bedding we commonly affect 

 belongs to the same period as "hoop skirts, haircloth sofas, cork- 

 screw curls, infant damnation, and b'iled dinners." I refer to 

 that "aberration of the human mind," carpet bedding, of which 

 William Morris said he "could not think, even when quite alone, 

 without a blush of shame." 



For it is a shame to shear plants unnecessarily, thus sacrific- 

 ing all their natural beauty of form. It is a shame to banish or 

 minimize flowers. It is a shame to consider the most complicated 

 designs the most elegant. And it is a shame to get colour in such 

 a crude and gaudy way when we can have material that will har- 

 monize with our climate and environment. Or, in practical 

 language, tender plants cost more than hardy ones, and carpet 

 beds are empty and unsightly for at least seven twelfths of the 

 year, from the first frost of autumn to the last one of spring. 



William Robinson has changed the face of England by induc- 

 ing people to sweep away most of this false art and restore hardy 

 plants on a new and better basis. We have never had in America 

 any such revolution in gardening because we .have only begun to 



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