PETER HENDERSON S PLANT CATALOGUE. 



OF LAWIS ill 



Extract from my New Work, " Gardening for Pleasure." 



The subject of lawn planting, including the proper setting and grouping of trees and shrubs 

 and their most effective disposal, is too extended for the scope of this book. These matters be* 

 long to works upon landscape gardening, and are ably treated in those by Downing, Kemp, 

 Weidenmann, Scott, and others. But the planting of flower-beds comes properly within our 

 limits. The old-fashioned mixed borders of four or six feet wide along the walks of the fruit or 

 vegetable garden were usually planted with hardy herbaceous plants, the tall growing at the back, 

 with the lower growing sorts at the front. These, when there was a good collection, gave a 

 bloom of varied color throughout the entire growing season. But the more modern style of flower 

 borders has quite displaced such collections, and they are but now little seen, unless in very old 

 gardens, or in botanical collections. Then again, we have the mixed borders of bedding plants, 

 a heterogeneous grouping of all kinds of tropical plants, still holding to the plan of either plac- 

 ing the highest at the back of the border if it has only one walk, or if a bed has a walk on each 

 side, the highest in the middle, and the plants sloping down to the walk on each side. The mixed 

 system still has its advocates, who deprecate the modern plan of massing in color as being too 

 formal, and too unnatural a way to dispose of flowers. But be that as it may, we will not stop 

 to argue the matter further than to state, that in a visit to England in 1872, it was most evident 

 that the " Carpet Styles " of massing plants as done at Battersea Park, London, were interesting 

 to the people in a way that no mixed border could ever be. Any one who has not yet seen the 

 wonderful effects produced by the massing of plants in this way, has a treat before him. Nearly 

 all the public parks in and about London are so planted, and thousands of cottage gardens vie 

 with each other in imitation of the parks. But to plant in patterns or in ribbon lines requires for 

 immediate effect a large number of plants, for the reason that they must be so set out th.it they 

 will meet to form continuous masses shortly after planting. 



An illustration in circles (for convenience), is given in 

 fig. 8, to show what plants can be massed together to give a 

 pleasing effect. Of course it will be understood that a bed of 

 any shape can be planted in this manner as well as circular 

 beds, only keeping in view the width of the bed. For exam- 

 ple, a bed having a diameter of ten feet may require eight or 

 ten different kinds of plants to form the necessary contrast, 

 while that of five feet will not require more than half that 

 number. The following named plants are well suited for 

 planting in masses or ribbon lines ; they are named as nearly 

 as possible in the order of their height, number one in each 

 case being the tallest. Many of them will require to be ' ' pinch- 

 ed back " to keep at the proper height, so that the outline will 

 form a regular slope from the centre or highest, point, down 

 to the front or lowest point — thus in list No. 1. Canna Indica 



zebrina will grow six feet high, while Lobelia Paxtoni, the lowest, is less than six inches. 

 The section given in figure 9 will give an idea of the arrangement of a bed of this kind. 



Diagram of Flower-bed. 



Jfk 





Fig. 9.— Section or Flower-bed. 



