CHAPTER III 
Beautiful Beds of Flowers—How to Plan and Plant them. 
WHEN designing a new flower bed in grass, the gardener does well 
to bear in mind that very elaborate shapes, especially those made up 
of fine curves, are exceedingly troublesome to use the lawn mower 
round ; many necessitate the use of the shears, and this extra piece 
of work, coming twice a week in the grass growing months, is a 
serious drawback. For this reason the beautiful bed shown in 
Fig. 1 should be cut in gravel in preference to grass. The design is 
a simple combination of two stars and a ring, the last having an 
edging of its own ; the loveliest effect is gained by making both stars 
of gold, the inner one paler than the outer. Golden Calceolarias and 
dwarf Tagetes will do admirably for portions A and B; the ground- 
work of the ring C may be of white Begonias, the edge D of scarlet 
Begonias, and the points edging E of Tom Thumb scarlet Nastur- 
tiums. As an Aster and Stock bed this design looks pretty carried 
out in violet, pink, white, and crimson ; the stars in this case should 
be white, the ground pink, the edge D crimson, the points B violet, 
and the edging to the points pink. There are many heights among 
varieties of Asters and Stocks, so to choose sorts is easy. As a bed 
for the usual popular bedding plants, the stars may be filled respect- 
ively with Geranium Cloth of Gold and Pyrethrum aureum, the 
round C may be of Geranium Silver Leaf, the edge of blue Lobelia, 
with a point edging of Lobelia in the pale blue shade, or else white. 
Rows of a foliage plant accentuate the effect of the centre star, e.g. 
dwarf Beet, Coleuses, Cineraria maritima, Centaurea candidissima, 
or Golden Feather. Asa bed all of Violas—except for the foliage 
plant—this is very charming : stars of Ardwell Gem and A. J. Row- 
berry will provide two shades of yellow, C should be rich purple, D 
a white ring, and the edging E mauve. 
Originality of planting is possible in a bed of most ordinary 
shape; an example of this truth is shown in Fig. 2, where an 
oblong bed is arranged in a striking fashion. One of its merits is 
the perfect simplicity of the lines, which makes pegging out a 
matter of not the slightest difticulty. A may be of brown Calceo- 
larias, B of gold Calceolarias, C of purple Asters, D of mauve Asters, 
E of cream Stocks, F of carmine Asters, G of Pyrethrum aureum 
(Golden Feather), H of cream Begonias, Asters, or Eschscholtzia alba. 
The border I should be brown to match the centre line of Calceo- 
laria ; this colour can be gained from a Tom Thumb Nasturtium. 
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