The Public Gardens and Parks of Paris. 93 



are never without occupants, never ragged, never flowerless. It is 

 not the old mixed border system, observe — far from it; nor is it the 

 bedding one. It is a system of bedding and herbaceous plants 

 mixed, but all changed every year. They steal out a spring flower 

 this week, and put in a fine herbaceous or bedding plant, or strong 

 growing florists' flower in its stead, and with the very best success. 

 Stocks of good bedding and herbaceous plants are always kept on 

 hand to carry out this, and the placing of the herbaceous plants 

 into fresh ground every year causes them to flower as freely as 

 the bedders. But those borders also contain permanent things — 

 lilac bushes, roses, &c., which give a line of verdure throughout the 

 centre of the border, and prevent it from being quite overdone 

 with flowers. Among those woody plants there were others 

 very beautiful and very sweet for many weeks through the better 

 part of the season, and those were low standard bushes of the 

 common honeysuckle! English gardeners would perhaps scarcely 

 ever think of that for such a position; but alternating between a 

 rose and a lilac, or other bush, and throwing down a head of free- 

 growing and flowering shoots, very few subjects look more 

 pleasing in the flower garden. Few arrangements can be more 

 satisfactory than the mixture of Phloxes, Gladioli, CEnothera 

 speciosa. Fuchsias, Pelargoniums, large yellow Achillea, &c., in 

 these beds at present and for months past. They also have the 

 subtropical system at the Luxembourg, and rather more taste- 

 fully than elsewhere. Thus in one part may be seen a graceful 

 mixture of a variety of fine-leaved plants with an edging of Fuchsias, 

 instead of the ponderous mass of ^00 plants of one variety of 

 Canna, which you sometimes meet with in other places about Paris. 

 M. Riviere is fond of having mixed beds of ferns in the open air, 

 and isolated specimens of tree ferns, Woodwardias elevated on 

 moss-covered stands, &c., and their effect is very good. 



Numerous amateurs and others go to the Luxembourg to hear 

 M. Rivifere deliver his free lectures, which are thoroughly practical, 

 and illustrated by the aid of living specimens and all the necessary 

 material. The lecturer goes through the theory and practice of the 



