28 MANUAL OF GARDENING 
It is a common saying that many*persons have no love or 
appreciation of flowers, but it is probably nearer to the truth to 
say that no person is wholly lacking in this respect. Even those 
persons who declare that they care nothing for flowers are gen- 
erally deceived by their dislike of flower-beds and the conven- 
tional methods of flower-growing. I know many persons who 
stoutly deny any liking for flowers, but who, nevertheless, are 
rejoiced with the blossoming of the orchards and the purpling 
of the clover fields. The fault may not lie so much with the 
persons themselves as with the methods of growing and display- 
ing the flowers. 
Defects in flower-growing. 
The greatest defect with our flower-growing is the stinginess 
of it. We grow our flowers as if they were the choicest rarities, 
to be coddled in a hotbed or under a bell-jar, and then to be ex- 
hibited as single specimens in some little pinched and ridiculous 
hole cut in the turf, or perched upon an ant-hill that some 
gardener has laboriously heaped on a lawn. Nature, on the 
other hand, grows many of her flowers in the most luxurious 
abandon, and one can pick an armful without offense. She 
grows her flowers in earnest, as a man grows a crop of corn. 
One can revel in the color and the fragrance and be satisfied. 
The next defect with our flower-growing is the flower-bed. 
Nature has no time to make flower-bed designs: she is busy 
growing flowers. And, then, if she were given to flower-beds, 
the whole effect would be lost, for she could no longer be luxu- 
rious and wanton, and if a flower were picked her whole 
scheme might be upset. Imagine a geranium-bed or a coleus- 
bed, with its wonderful “design,” set out into a wood or in a 
free and open landscape! Iven the birds would laugh at it! 
What I want to say is that we should grow flowers freely 
when we make a flower-garden. We should have enough of them 
to make the effort worth the while. I sympathize with the 
