Balance in the Flower Garden- By Mrs. Francis King, ^ c „ h 



PLANTING FOR THE MOST ARTISTIC EFFECTS OF MASS AS WELL AS HARMONY OF COLOR AND SUCCESSION 

 OF BLOOM THROUGH THE SEASON — WHAT THE AMATEUR SHOULD THINK OF IN MAKING THE DESIGN 



WHEN the chance to arrange the plant- 

 ing of a formal garden of my own 

 fell into my hands about eight years ago, 

 I felt strangely the need of advice in what 

 I was about to do. Advice, however, was 

 not forthcoming, and at the outset I fell, 

 of course, into the pit of absurdity. With- 

 out any reason for so doing, I decided 

 to arrange the planting in this garden, 

 (a balanced design in four equal parts 

 with eight beds in each section) as though 

 the whole were a scrap of perennial border 

 a few feet wide and a few feet long. The 

 ridiculous idea occurred to me to have the 

 garden a picture to be looked at from the 

 house alone. The matter of garden de- 

 sign was to fade out of sight except with 

 regard to the few beds immediately sur- 

 rounding the small central pool. These 

 were planted more or less formally with 

 heliotrope in the four parallelograms 

 nearest the centre and iris and lilies in four 

 other spaces near the rest. I endeavored 

 to produce irregular crosswise banks of 

 color from the far end of the garden to the 

 part nearest the house; scarlet, orange and 

 yellow with a fair sprinkling of hollyhocks 

 in yellow and white on the more distant 

 edge; before these, crowds of white flowers, 

 gray-leaved plants and blue-flowering 

 things, and nearest of all to the beholder, 

 brighter and paler pinks. 



The result was nothing but an ugly 

 muddle; indescribably so when one hap- 

 pened to be in the midst of the garden 

 itself. For two or three years I bore with 

 this unhappy condition of things; indeed 

 nothing but the fact that the flowers con- 

 ducted themselves 

 in remarkably lux- 

 uriant and brilliant 

 fashion due to the 

 freshness and rich- 

 ness of the soil, 

 could have saved 

 me from seeing 

 sooner the silly mis- 

 take I had made ; 

 when chancing to 

 look down upon the 

 garden from an up- 

 per window, the real 

 state of things sud- 

 denly revealed itself, 

 and from that day 

 I set about to plan 

 and plant in totally 

 different fashion. 



With Mr. Robin- 

 son, I feel against 

 the wretched car- 

 pet-bedding system, 

 while I quite agree 

 on the other hand 

 with the spokesman 

 for the formalists, 



Reginald Blomfield, who declared that there 

 is no such thing as the "wild garden," that 

 the name is a contradiction of terms. The 

 one thing I do maintain, is that advice, 

 the very best advice, is the prime necessity. 

 For those who can afford it, the fine land- 

 scape-architect; for those who cannot, 

 the criticism or counsel of some friend or 

 acquaintance whose experience has been 

 wider than their own. The time is sure 

 to come when experts in the art of 

 proper flower grouping alone will be in 

 demand. 



There is no doubt about it, our grand- 

 mothers were right when they preferred 

 to see a vase on each side of the clock! 

 With a given length of shelf and a central 

 object on that shelf, one's instinct for 

 equalizing calls for a second candlestick 

 or bowl to balance the first. My meaning 

 may be illustrated by Mrs. Tyson's beau- 

 tiful garden at Berwick, Maine. Charm- 

 ing as is this lovely garden-vista, with its 

 delightful posts in the foreground, re- 

 peating the lines of slim poplar in the 

 middle distance, it would have given me 

 much more pleasure could those heavy- 

 headed white or pale colored phloxes on the 

 right have had a perfect repetition of their 

 effective masses exactly opposite — directly 

 across the grass walk. These phloxes 

 cry aloud for balance, placed as they 

 seem to be in a distinctly formal setting. 



So it is in the formal flower garden. 

 I have come to see quite plainly through 

 several years of lost time that balanced 

 planting throughout is the only planting 

 for a garden that has any design worth 



The large increase of the lower growing plants, evenly repeated in each quadrant of the garden, give 



it harmony of mass 



164 



the name. It is difficult to conceive of 

 that formal garden in which the use of for- 

 mal or clipped trees would be inappropri- 

 ate; and these we must not fail to mention, 

 not only because of the fine foil in color 

 and rich background of dark tone which 

 they bring into the garden, but of their 

 shadow masses as well and their value as 

 accents. And that word "accents" brings 

 me to the consideration of the first import- 

 ant placing of flowers in a garden, which 

 like my own, is, unlike all Gaul, divided 

 into four parts. 



Two crosswalks intersect my garden, 

 causing four entrances. To flank each 

 of these entrances, it can be at once seen, 

 balanced planting must prevail. In the 

 eight beds whose corners occur at these 

 entrances, this planting is used: large 

 masses of Thermopsis Caroliniana give an 

 early and brightly conspicuous bloom. 

 Around these the tall salmon pink phlox, 

 Aurore Boreale, much later; below this — 

 filling out the angle of the corner to the 

 very point — the blue lyme grass (Elymus 

 arenarius), gladiolus William Falconer, 

 and lowest of all, Phlox Drummondi, var. 

 Chamois-rose. None of these colors fight 

 with each other at any time, and the large 

 group of tall-growing things is well fronted 

 by the intermediate heights of the lyme 

 grass and the gladiolus when in growth 

 or in bloom. The four far corners of my 

 garden I also consider more effective when 

 planted with tall -growing flowers; in these 

 the Dropmore Anchusa Italica, first shines 

 bluely forth; this soon gives place to the 

 white physostegia with phlox Fernando 

 Cortez blooming be- 

 low the slim white 

 spikes just men- 

 tioned; and last, to 

 light up the corners, 

 comes the mauve 

 Physostegia Virgin- 

 ica, var. rosea, whose 

 bloom here is far 

 more profuse and 

 effective than that 

 of its white sisters. 

 This grouping gives 

 almost continuous 

 bloom and very tel- 

 ling color from mid- 

 June to mid-Sep- 

 tember; the periods 

 of green when they 

 occur are short, and 

 the vigorous looking 

 plants are not at all 

 objectionable before 

 they blossom. The 

 effect of balanced 

 planting in these 

 corners, I consider 

 good. The eye is 



