CHAPTER XVIII 

 BEDDING OUT 



Nothing is more the child of art than a garden. 



— Sir Walter Scott. 



IT REQUIRES some fortitude in this day to express 

 approval of the bedding-out system. It has de- 

 parted, or should have, with the days of anti- 

 macassars and hand-painted tambourines, and no one wants 

 this period of terrible and useless ornament to return; yet it 

 seems to me that there are times and places where we may 

 still "bed out" with propriety and even grace. 



Where there are flower beds on a terrace that extends 

 along the facade of the dwelling there would be reason to 

 resort to this sort of planting. Such a conspicuous situation 

 should not be at the mercy of the ups and downs, the 

 defections and general uncertainness that prevails in the 

 region devoted to perennials and annuals, where their 

 half-wild ways are simply an additional charm. On the 

 contrary, in such a position we should enjoy a display of 

 persistent colour and exact arrangement, only to be attained 

 by the use of law-abiding bedders, long trained to march in 

 rows and to suppress any ideas of their own about spreading 

 and general emancipation. A spot so treated can never be 



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