THE TECHNICS OF GARDENING. 171 



best suited for beds " (Wilkinson on " Colour," 



P- 375)- 



With regard to the ornamental turf-beds of our 



modern gardens. To judge of a garden upon high 

 principles, we expect it to be the finest and fittest 

 expression that a given plot of ground will take ; it 

 must be the perfect adaptation of means to an end, and 

 that end is beauty. Are we to suppose, then, that 

 the turf-beds of strange device that we meet with in 

 modern gardens are the best that can be done by the 

 heir of all the ages in the way of garden-craft ? A 

 garden, I am aware, has other things to attend to 

 besides the demands of ideal beauty ; it has to 

 embellish life to supply innocent pleasure to the 

 inmates of the house as well as to dignify the house 

 itself; and the devising of these vagrant beds that 

 sprawl about the grounds is a pleasure that can be 

 ill spared from the artistic delights of a modern 

 householder. It is indeed wonderful to what heights 

 the British fancy can rise when put to the push, if 

 only it have a congenial field ! So here we have 

 flower-beds shaped as crescents and kidneys beds 

 like flying bats or bubbling tadpoles, commingled 

 butterflies and leeches, stars and sausages, hearts and 

 commas, monograms and maggots a motley assort- 

 ment to be sure but the modern mind is motley, 

 and the pretty flowers smile a sickly smile out of 

 their comic beds, as though Paradise itself could pro- 

 vide them with no fairer lodgings ! 



And yet if I dare speak my mind " sike fancies 

 weren foolerie ; " and it were hard to find a good word 



