BEDDING PLANTS 



ALL over the country, alike on elaborate lawns 

 and in poor men's door-yards, bedding plants, as 

 represented by arrangements of coleuses and 

 geraniums, are evidently popular to a remarkable degree. 

 The writer desires to express his full appreciation of their 

 brilliant attractions, and their value in landscape garden- 

 ing schemes when they are properly employed. Nothing 

 is more splendid and rich-looking, and thoroughly de- 

 corative, than an arrangement of cannas, coleuses, and 

 alternantheras, when they are artistically combined ; but, 

 on the other hand, no plant effect on the lawn can be 

 made more crude, garish, and vulgar than a badly de- 

 signed and located arrangement of the same plants. It 

 should be remembered that the more brilliant and strik- 

 ing a plant is, the more difficult it is to use it in such a 

 way as to perform a harmonious part in the general 

 scheme of arrangement on the smallest lawn ; in truth, 

 it proves, in practice, that the smaller the lawn, the 

 easier it. is to create an unpleasant, jarring effect with 

 bedding plants. There are, of course, no plants that 

 can be used carelessly, and in a crude and improperly 

 related way, without due consideration for the other pos- 

 sibilities for beauty that the place may have, but so 

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