A bed of Philadelphia Lemoinei, showing the arching grace and stems covered 

 nearly their whole length with flowers. We now have a dozen low shrubs with 

 the same faultless habit 



The "continuous-blooming effect" — hardy hydrangeas. Others that will 

 bloom two or three months are Baby Rambler rose, gaillardias, the Napoleon 

 III. pink, Miss Lingard phlox, etc. 



England's New Kind of Flower Bed— By wilhelm Miller, ;s 



IT HARMONIZES WITH OUR CLIMATE BETTER THAN OUR PRESENT PLAN, COSTS LESS, IS ATTRAC- 

 TIVE TWO MONTHS LONGER EVERY YEAR AND ABOLISHES ANNUAL DIGGING AND REPLANTING 



[Editor's Note. — This is the fifth of a series of articles showing how we can get nearly all the important English garden effects, not with European materials, but with American 

 plants, as a rule, and a few Japanese for "spice." "English Efjects with Hardy Conifers" appeared in January; "Trees," in February; "Shrubs," in March; "Broad-leaved 

 Evergreens," in April. Other articles will describe the most important English efjects with vines, bulbs, perennials, etc. A companion series in "Country Life in America" is devoted 

 to the different types of gardening, e. g., Landscape Gardening (in January); Formal Gardens (February); Rose Gardens (March); Water Gardens (May), etc.] 



IF THERE is any one thing on which 

 we Americans pride ourselves it is on 

 being "up-to-date," or at least progressive, 

 yet the style of flower bedding we commonly 

 affect belongs to the same period as "hoop 

 skirts, hair-cloth sofas, corkscrew curls, 

 infant damnation, and b'iled dinners." I 

 refer to that "aberration of the human mind," 

 carpet bedding, of which William Morris 

 said he "could not think, even when quite 

 alone, without a blush of shame." 



For it is a shame to shear plants 

 unnecessarily, thus sacrificing all their 

 natural beauty of form. It is a shame to 

 banish or minimize flowers. It is a shame 

 to consider the most complicated designs 

 the most elegant. And it is a shame to 

 get color in such a crude and gaudy way 

 when we can have material that will har- 

 monize with our climate and environment. 

 Or, in practical language, tender plants cost 

 more than hardy ones, and carpet beds are 

 empty and unsightly for at least seven- 

 twelfths of the year, from the first frost of 

 autumn to the last one of spring. 



William Robinson has changed the face 

 of England by inducing people to sweep 

 away most of this false art and restore 

 hardy plants on a new and better basis. 

 We have never had in America any such 

 revolution in gardening because we have 

 only begun to have gardens. But every 

 foot of England was, broadly speaking, 

 cultivated to the utmost then, as now, so 

 that the land was filled with old and precious 

 gardens. This beauty was suddenly de- 

 faced when the bedding mania swept prac- 

 tically all hardy flowers out of gardens and 



The elegant foliage of Funkia ovata. Still more 

 refined is the white day lily. Funkias need no 

 edging or supplementary plants, but cannot stand 

 full sunshine 



transformed England into one gigantic 

 crazy quilt. It is only faint echoes of all 

 this that come to us in books. I used to 

 think such talk merely "literary." But 

 everywhere in England last summer I 

 heard about "the real thing" from old men, 

 who were refused admission to flower shows 

 for their larkspurs, peonies, irises, and other 

 hardy flowers. And on many fine estates 

 I heard of great sums wasted in trying and 

 discarding the bedding system. 



Yet there was really some sense in the 

 bedding system in the early forties. China 

 and Japan had not been opened to the 

 world and, therefore, about one-half of the 

 best hardy plants now cultivated were then 

 unknown. Moreover, hardy plants, as a 

 rule, bloom only two weeks, whereas gera- 

 niums, verbenas, and annual phlox will bloom 

 for three months. It is no wonder that the 

 gardeners tired of the hardy flowers then 

 known, because many of them were un- 

 sightly, or at least commonplace in foliage. 

 218 



For instance, the foliage becomes shabby 

 in forget-me-nots, columbines, and sweet 

 Williams after these have bloomed; it is 

 rather coarse and weedy in foxgloves and 

 hollyhocks; subject to disease in phlox 

 and larkspurs; commonplace in asters and 

 gaillardias; and often disappears after 

 blooming in the case of Oriental poppies. 



Another reason why the old gardeners 

 sickened of hardy plants is that the ordi- 

 nary mixed border was not then, and is 

 not now, artistic. They used to "dot" 

 and "repeat," i. e., use the same kind of 

 plant singly in all parts of the border, the 

 effect of which is generally weak and 

 spotty. Nowadays we understand better 

 that the only way to get strong, pure effects 

 is to plan first for a few large masses. 



So we cannot blame the old gardeners 

 for preferring three months of bloom to two 

 weeks. But the next step they took is hard 

 to forgive, because tender foliage plants 

 that have no beauty, save color, are the 

 most ignoble type of vegetation. I do not 

 deny that coleus will give more color for 

 the money than any plant that grows, and 

 it submits with lamb-like grace to the 

 shears. But so will billboards give color 

 — and twelve months, too, instead of five. 

 A plant without growth, flower, or fruit is 

 like a man without character. Carpet 

 bedding becomes insufferably monotonous. 

 It may be justified in small public parks, 

 where people would steal flowers, but to 

 make it the dominant feature of a private 

 estate is really "a case for the blue wagon." 



There are many disciples of William 

 Robinson who go farther than the master. 



