Faults in Gardening 



bending the blossoms to one side. Now 

 many will get rid of the difficulty by delib- 

 erately turning the shoot upside downwards, 

 so as to make the blossoms pendulous 

 instead of upright, when, of course, all their 

 beauty is destroyed. The pendulous blos- 

 som so inverted looks weak and straggling, 

 the erect one stiff and heavy. Many, too, 

 cram flowers together in round dense 

 bunches, so that we can see the shape of 

 nothing. Sometimes this can hardly be 

 avoided, as in the case of Cowslips or 

 Violets. And assuredly few contrasts can 

 be more lovely than Violets, white and 

 purple, massed together with a bunch of 

 Primroses, and all resting on the broad 

 green Primrose leaves. But what we get 

 here is chiefly the colour and the smell. 

 Flowers generally are best arranged more 

 loosely, and with more of the herbage 

 attached, even if there must be fewer of 

 them. Thus in spring I like to have two 

 or three bright scarlet Anemones {hor- 

 tensis), with two or three spikes of Grape 

 Hyacinth {racemosum), two Jonquils, two 

 pieces of white Ranunculus, two brown 

 Fritillaries [pyrenaicd) and two white ones, 

 and a single stem of the large pink Saxi- 

 frage, and all these intermixed and put to- 

 gether loosely in a small vase, so as to look 

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