256 FLOWERS AND BEDDING PLANTS, 



Fig. si. 



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engraving at the end of this chapter. This would require a different 

 style of planting. Supposing its base to be four feet in diameter, 

 there would be a margin of two feet all around it for low trailing 

 flowers. The design for a basket-vase is intended for an open lawn, 

 and shows a collection of plants quite different from what would be 

 best for the design under consideration. Here we would have for 

 its centre a single group of the Canna sanguinea chatei, surrounded 

 by a circle of Japanese maize ; next a circle of Salvia argentea, and 

 for the outside border the Lady Pollock geranium inter-planted with 

 some of the slender, drooping, light-leaved plants, named farther on 

 in this chapter, for the decoration of vases. 



If this central bed is to have neither a pedestal-vase nor basket- 

 vase, it may still be made the most conspicuous point of interest in 

 the parterre with plants alone. It is desirable that the lawn should 

 rise gently towards it on all sides, and that the bed be raised in 

 the centre as much as may be without making the earth liable to 

 be washed upon the lawn. In the centre, if this flower-garden is 

 intended to be permanent, we would plant the remarkable variety of 

 the European silver fir, known as the' Picea pectinata pendula, or 

 the variety of the Norway spruce, known as the Abies excelsa in- 

 verta, shown in Fig. 52 ; and around it a circle of the tallest Japan 

 lilies ; next a circle of the mountain-of-snow geranium alternated 



