STATE POMOl.OGICAL SOCIETY. 57 



As wealth and culture increased they found visible expression in 

 the artistic structures which the architect has fitted and accommodated 

 to the growing social and domestic needs. The wide-sweeping and 

 well-shaded lawns or close-cut grass plats constitute the most appro- 

 priate surroundings to such homes, and conspicuous objects of 

 attraction on these grounds are the fanciful beds cut in the turf and 

 the well-trimmed borders by the gravel paths and carriage drives. 

 As the tall, irregular-growing perennials are in no wise fitted for such 

 beds, if retained at all are consigned to the background, to be used 

 where screens are needed or massed in large beds to be seen from the 

 distance. 



Lawn beds and borders require low-growing plants capable of being 

 cut back and kept withiu lines. As their beauty depends on their 

 being in contrast with the green of the lawns, we must have thickly- 

 flowering or self-colored plants, and prominent among the latter are 

 the coleus. 



The coleus, being a tropical plant, requires hot-house protection 

 during the winter. Very few people succeed in keeping them through 

 the winter in the house because of varying temperature ; for if suf- 

 ficiently hot during the day, the temperature is too low during the 

 night, they finally lose their leaves and die before spring ; so that 

 persons who do not feel like going to the expense of renewing them 

 every spring from the florist are obliged to go without or may keep 

 along a few scrawny specimens of the stronger growing sorts. 



My admiration for this charming bedding plant induces me 

 to offer some suggestions in regard to its culture and the 

 feasibility of adopting them pretty generally for bedding pur- 

 poses even by persons who do not feel like paying the full price 

 for even an ordinary coleus bed every year. They are a very rapid 

 growing plant and easily propagated, in fact it is the exception 

 to lose even one cutting when put to root in the least favorable 

 situation. So that if one could procure a dozen medium-sized plants 

 of the florist as early as the first of April or as soon as it will do to 

 start a hot-bed, you can cut the plants back, putting the cuttings to 

 root, and the old plants will force more cuttings, as it takes but one 

 week to root cuttings with ordinary bottom heat, these slips can be 

 potted off by that time into small thumb-pots and sunk into the sand 

 covering the hot-bed. In two or three weeks at most they will need 

 topping and these can in time be used for a later set of slips to be in 

 their turn rooted, and this will bring the second rooting no later than 



