HINTS ON FLOWER-GARDENS. • f 



" God might have made the earth bring forth 

 Enough for great and small, 

 The oak tree and the cedar tree, 

 Without a flower at all. 



" Our outward life requires them not 



Then wherefore had they birth? 

 To minister delight to man. 

 To beautify the earth. 



" To comfort man, to whisper hope 

 Whene'er his faith is dim ; 

 For who so eareth for the flowers, 

 Will much more care for him ! " 



Now, there are many genuine lovers of flowers who have at- 

 tempted to make flower-gardens — in the simplicity of their hearts 

 believing it to be the easiest thing in the world to arrange so many 



beautiful annuals and perennials into " a living knot of wonders" 



who have quite failed in realizing all that they conceived of and 

 fairly expected when they first set about it. It is easy enough to 

 draw upon paper a pleasing plan of a flower-garden, whether in the 

 geometric, or %.e natural, or the "^artimesg'Me" style, that shall 

 satisfy the eye of the beholder. But it is far more difficult to plant 

 and arrange a garden of this kind in such a way as to afford a 

 constant succession of beauty, both in blossom and leaf. Indeed, 

 among the hundreds of avowed flower-gardens which we have 

 seen in different parts of the country, public and private, we cannot 

 name half-a-dozen which are in any considerable degree satisfactory/. 



The two leading faults in all our flower-gardens, are the wa?it 

 of proper selection in the plants themselves, and a faulty arrange^ 

 merit, by which as much surface of bare soil meets the eye as is 

 clothed with verdure and blossoms. 



Regarding the first eflfect, it seems to us that the entire beauty 

 of a flower-garden almost depends upon it. However elegant or 

 striking may be the design of a garden, that design is made poor 

 or valueless, when it is badly planted so as to conceal its merits, or 

 filled with a selection of unsuitable plants, which, from their coarse 

 or ragged habit of growth, or their remaining in bloom but a short 



