222 BEDDING PLANTS. 



There is one feature of the flower or foliage bed that is 

 apt to look stilt' and inartistic, and that is the extreme edge 

 or border. This is usually too sharply cut in outline. The 

 plants do not blend with the grass, and the sharp transition 

 line is not agreeable. To overcome this stiffness of outline, 

 single plants of the coleus or geranium size should be set 

 out in the grass just beyond the actual border of the bed. 

 Then at various points throughout the bed the pyrethrum 

 or alternanthera edging the masses of coleus or g-eranium 

 should be brought forward close to the low border, and 

 here and there several of them should be allowed to get 

 over the border and establish themselves in the neighbor- 

 ing grass. This will create a properly related emphasis of 

 outline, a pleasing variety, and irregularity enough to just 

 escape formality. There must be necessarily a certain pre- 

 cision of lines, but the treatment should all the time bear 

 a distinct and well-defined kinship to that employed by 

 nature in our fields and pastures. 



I have now considered two common types of bedding, 

 one a narrow border around the stone coping of a fountain, 

 and another the frequently recurring case of a plantation 

 against the wall of a building. 



There is another and still more important one, in the 

 small city parks for instance, ^vhere there is no building or 

 fountain around which to mass the bedding. In that case 

 the bedding should be airanged as foreground to the shrub 

 groups, leaving the main lawn space undiminished. An 

 illustration of this arrangement ma}- be seen in the half-acre 

 lawn of Jeannette Park, on the East River, liear the foot of 

 Broad Street, New York, where belts of glowing coleuses 



