28 MANUAL OF GARDENING 



It is a common saying that many persons have no love or 

 appreciation of flowers, but it is probably nearer to the truth to 

 say that no person is wholly lacking in this respect. Even those 

 persons who declare that they care nothing for flowers are gen- 

 erally deceived by their dislike of flower-beds and the conven- 

 tional methods of flower-growing. I know many persons who 

 stoutly deny any liking for flowers, but who, nevertheless, are 

 rejoiced with the blossoming of the orchards and the purpling 

 of the clover fields. The fault may not lie so much with the 

 persons themselves as with the methods of growing and display- 

 ing the flowers. 



Defects in flower-growing. 



The greatest defect with our flower-growing is the stinginess 

 of it. We grow our flowers as if they were the choicest rarities, 

 to be coddled in a hotbed or under a bell-jar, and then to be ex- 

 hibited as single specimens in some little pinched and ridiculous 

 hole cut in the turf, or perched upon an ant-hill that some 

 gardener has laboriously heaped on a lawn. Nature, on the 

 other hand, grows many of her flowers in the most luxurious 

 abandon, and one can pick an armful without offense. She 

 grows her flowers in earnest, as a man grows a crop of corn. 

 One can revel in the color and the fragrance and be satisfied. 



The next defect with our. flower-growing is the flower-bed. 

 Nature has no time to make flower-bed designs: she is busy 

 growing flowers. And, then, if she were given to flower-beds, 

 the whole effect would be lost, for she could no longer be luxu- 

 rious and wanton, and if a flower were picked her whole 

 scheme might be upset. Imagine a geranium-bed or a coleus- 

 bed, with its wonderful "design," set out into a wood or in a 

 free and open landscape! Even the birds would laugh at it! 



What I want to say is that we should grow flowers freely 

 when we make a flower-garden. We should have enough of them 

 to make the effort worth the while. I sympathize with the 



