100 STUDIES IN GARDENING 



that its natural character be always borne in mind. 

 It is a significant fact that the monstrous flowers have 

 usually been produced in those plants which are 

 treated in gardens in the least natural way — that is 

 to say, in bedding plants, especially Begonias. On the 

 other hand, in the case of plants which are usually 

 grown naturally development has in most cases meant 

 improvement. The florists have produced more new 

 varieties of the DaJcfodU of late years than of any other 

 flower. But their changes have been nearly all im- 

 provements, and the Daffodil is a plant that nearly 

 every one grows in a natural way, except when it is 

 forced or in the case of very expensive new varieties. 

 Thus the improvers of Daffodils usually have the 

 whole plant in their miads, whereas the improvers of 

 Begonias think only of their flowers. There can be 

 no doubt that the practice of rock gardening has im- 

 proved the general taste ia flowers, for tricks cannot 

 be played upon Alpine plants; they have to be grown 

 as far as possible in their natural conditions, and their 

 beauty is peculiarly the beauty of character, a beauty 

 produced by the strange conditions in which they 

 maintain their struggle for life. The gardener who 

 once learns to love this beauty gets a keener apprecia- 

 tion of the character of all other plants. He likes to 

 see them growing as if they were self-sown seedlings, 

 and he is impatient of any florist's development or of 

 any system of culture which deprives them of char- 

 acter. Character, in plants as in men, is produced 

 by struggle and by adaptation. In the garden both 



