HARDY BEDDING 309 



is generally weak and spotty. Nowadays we understand better 

 that the only way to get strong, pure effects is to plan first for a 

 few large masses. 



So we cannot blame the old gardeners for preferring three 

 months of bloom to two weeks. But the next step they took is 

 hard to forgive, because tender foliage plants that have no beauty, 

 save colour, are the most ignoble type of vegetation. I do not deny 

 that coleus will give more colour for the money than any other 

 plant that grows, and it submits with lamb-like grace to the shears. 

 But so will billboards give colour and twelve months, too, 

 instead of five. A plant without growth, flower, or fruit is like a 

 man without character. Carpet bedding becomes insufferably 

 monotonous. It may be justified in small public parks, where 

 people would steal flowers, but to make it the dominant feature of 

 a private estate is really "a case for the blue wagon." 



There are many disciples of William Robinson who go farther 

 than the master. They cry, "Away with tender plants and carpet 

 bedding!" and talk as if there were something high and holy about 

 hardy plants per se. I do not believe in going to extremes in any- 

 thing, and I defy any shouter for "old-fashioned flowers" 

 to name any hardy plant that will do as much for the money as the 

 geranium. Here we have good colour, three months of bloom, 

 beauty of form in leaf and flower, fragrance, and extraordinary 

 ease of culture. It is not necessary to use the varieties with 

 piercing colours and leaves marked like Joseph's coat, for even 

 the geranium is capable of quiet and cool effects. 



In other words, tender bedding plants are not wrong in them- 

 selves, as many writers say; it is only the abuse of the bedding 

 system that is wrong. Even in a private garden, a few beds of 

 tender plants are usually desirable, because every garden needs at 



