266 WOOD AND GARDEN 



some form of good garden effect. But the great fault 

 of the bedding system when at its height was, that it 

 swept over the country as a t3n:annical fashion, that 

 demanded, and for the time being succeeded iu effect- 

 ing, the exclusion of better and more thoughtful kinds 

 of gardening ; for I beheve I am right in saying that 

 it spread Uke an epidemic disease, and raged far and 

 wide for nearly a quarter of a century. 



Its worst form of all was the " ribbon border," 

 generally a line of scarlet Geranium at the back, then 

 a line of Calceolaria, then a line of blue Lobelia, and 

 lastly, a line of the inevitable Golden Feather Fever- 

 few, or what our gardener used to call Featherfew. 

 Could anything be more tedious or more stupid ? And 

 the ribbon border was at its worst when its lines 

 were not straight, but waved about in weak and silly 

 sinuations. 



And when bedding as a fashion was dead, when 

 this false god had been toppled off his pedestal, and 

 his worshippers had been converted to better beUefs, 

 iu turning and rending him they often went too far, 

 and did injustice to the innocent by professing a dis- 

 like to many a good plant, and renouncing its use. It 

 was not the fault of the Geranium or of the Calceolaria 

 that they had been grievously misused and made to 

 usurp too large a share of our garden spaces. Not 

 once but many a time my visitors have expressed 

 unbounded surprise when they saw these plants in my 

 garden, saying, "I should have thought that you 



