CHAPTER XXIII 



THE BEDDING FASHION AND _ ITS 'INFLUENCE 



It is curious to look back at the old days of bedding- 

 out, when that and that only meant gardening to most 

 people, and to remember how the fashion, beginning 

 in the larger gardens, made its way like a great inundat- 

 ing wave, submerging the lesser ones, and almost drown- 

 ing out the beauties of the many little flowery cottage 

 plots of our English waysides. And one wonders 

 how it all came about, and why the bedding system, 

 admirable for its own purpose, should have thus out- 

 stepped its bounds, and have been allowed to rim. riot 

 among gardens great and small throughout the land. 

 But so it was, and for many years the fashion, for it 

 was scarcely anything better, reigned supreme. 



It was well for all real lovers of flowers when some 

 quarter of a century ago a strong champion of the 

 good old flowers arose, and fought strenuously to stay 

 the devastating tide, and to restore the healthy Hking 

 for the good old garden flowers. Many soon followed, 

 and now one may say that all England has flocked to 

 the standard. Bedding as an all-prevailing fashion is 

 now dead ; the old garden-flowers are again honoured 



