206 GARDENS PAST AND PRESENT 



can hardly fail to possess some intrinsic beauty, 

 hap-hazard planting may take much of it away. 



A few brief words taken from a paper read 

 before the Royal Horticultural Society on the sub- 

 ject of " The Arrangement of the Flower Border," 

 are so full of helpful teaching in garden art that 

 they cannot be too often recalled to mind, and I 

 feel sure that I shall be forgiven for repeating them 

 here. 



" An essential feature in a garden of hardy 

 flowers is a well-arranged mixed border. It is here 

 that we can show the true summer flowers at their 

 best, but it is here, more than anywhere else, 

 that the ' art of many sacrifices ' must be put in 

 practice. For the main spaces plants should be 

 chosen of bold and striking beauty, but as a bor- 

 der of all large plants would have a kind of mono- 

 tony, certain spaces, chiefly towards the front, but 

 also running back in many parts among groups 

 of taller things, should be planted with those of 

 lower growth. . . . Each kind of plant in a mixed 

 border should stand in a bold group, and the 

 groups, differing in size and shape, according to 

 the aspect of the plant, should follow one another 

 in a carefully arranged sequence of colour, keeping 

 plants of a colour together, such as mulleins with 

 CEnotheras, and Tritoma with Oriental poppy. In 

 the case of the last named it is convenient to actu- 

 ally intergroup the two kinds, for the foliage of 

 the Poppies dies away early and the blank space 

 it would have left becomes covered by the later- 

 growing leaves of the autumn-blooming Tritoma. 

 Groups of red, orange, and strong yellow follow 



