162 GARDENS OF ENGLAND 



mere routine will satisfy the taste of the present 

 generation, for, happily, we are being educated 

 every day in garden matters into more simple 

 agreement with Nature's methods, and in a certain 

 ordered measure to follow in her footsteps. The 

 death-blow was given to the old bedding-out 

 system, not by the plants which were used, for 

 in themselves they were beautiful, but by the 

 commingling of crude colours entirely antagonistic 

 and intolerably dull in their perpetual reiteration. 

 But bedding-out must, and always will remain 

 an essential part of a certain type of garden, if 

 not of all. 



"In artificial gardening, the great difficulty 

 which often arises is to maintain the effect for a 

 giveii length of time. Perhaps it would be better 

 if we were sometimes content to let one bed pass 

 out of highest beauty while another comes on, 

 especially in the smaller sort of home -garden, 

 where a 'blaze of colour' is not necessary. 

 Neither is it indispensable in all cases that beds 

 should be emptied of their occupants every season. 

 Here are some plants, indeed, that will not only 

 go on blooming for months, but will long remain 

 our fast friends. Now and then, for example, one 

 sees a mass of purple clematis pegged down and 



