IV PLANTING 53 



For perfection of culture, which is the principal 

 object of these pages, the best situation must be 

 chosen, even in defiance of artistic surroundings. 

 And for my own personal taste I may say that, 

 given the most perfectly arranged Eosarium that 

 ever was seen, I would leave it for a few plants in 

 a bed in the kitchen garden with cabbages on one 

 side and onions on the other, if there alone could be 

 found the perfect blooms. 



As to the shape of the beds, it seems evident that 

 they should not be so wide as to necessitate treading 

 upon the soil to reach and cut the blooms. This 

 points to long and comparatively narrow beds, and 

 when you have them there seems no escape from 

 actual rows, following the shape of the beds, 

 whether straight or curved. Anything else would 

 waste the precious room, for if the whole bed be 

 made of the best soil and fed and manured equally, 

 the room that will hold another plant is precious. 

 Straight rows may be condemned as formal, and so 

 they are, but they are thoroughly practical and 

 economical, and undoubtedly the best for an 

 exhibitor, who wants to be able to go over all his 

 plants easily and expeditiously. 



My own Eose beds are simple parallelograms five- 

 and-a-half feet wide, and such beds may be as long as 

 you like. I may wish mine were longer than they are 

 but not wider. Longitudinally they are separated 

 by grass paths of the same width, and there should 

 be cross paths here and there, but not too many. 

 Grass paths are much superior to gravel in appear- 

 ance and in cost of keeping in order ; and of course 

 if the Eose beds are made out of a meadow or 

 pasture, the grass is simply left. These paths 



