86 GARDENS OF ENGLAND 



For planting beds in a geometrical garden 

 where the object is merely to fill spaces of certain 

 shapes with a mass of some chosen colour, these 

 dwarfed plants are all very well, and no doubt this 

 is a way of gardening that has its uses. But 

 because the dwarfed form may suit such use in 

 perhaps one garden out of a hundred, it is not a 

 reason for denying the best possible form the plant 

 might have to the other ninety-nine. May it not 

 be one of the many cases in which the practice of 

 what is the easiest has falsely taken the place of 

 what is best ? 



For any one of the great firms who benefit us by 

 growing acres upon acres of beautiful plants for 

 seed, to accept as a general article of faith that 

 all annual plants are the better for dwarfing is 

 certainly to adopt an attitude of mind which does 

 not put an undue or fatiguing strain upon the 

 imagination. 



It is, no doubt, very easy to make this mistake, 

 for here and there is a plant that just does want a 

 certain degree of dwarfing, and when such a form 

 occurs in a seed bed the condensing of the mass of 

 bloom at once gives the dwarfed plant the appear- 

 ance of being better furnished, and the idea, adopted 

 with good reason in the case of one seed bed, is apt 



