CHAPTER III 



ORNAMENTALS. 



/. Recent Tendencies in Ornamental Gardening and 

 in Ornamentals. 



§ I. EVOLUTION IN TASTE. 



v The last year or two has witnessed a gratifying tendency in 

 ornamental gardening to return to old species and to single 

 flowered varieties. For many years the monstrous double 

 flowers and horticultural curiosities have eclipsed simpler 

 plants. It has seemed as if the freaks of fashion were deter- 

 mined to draw the gardener away from nature into a curiosity 

 shop of monstrous forms and intense colors. This desire for 

 abnormal forms of plants no doubt had its inception in the 

 offering of striking varieties by dealers, but the desire appears 

 to have outrun the means of its gratification and to have de- 

 manded impossibilities of the agents which gave it birth. 

 The result has been that seedsmen and plantsmen have exer- 

 cised every ingenuity to satisfy the public demand. Like all 

 mere fashion, however, this love of novelty and monstrosity 

 must reach a time when it shall sink into the purer and more 

 permanent love of simplicity in nature. It is not necessary 

 that all monstrosity and curiosity in plant variation should be 

 discarded, but it is a rule which every person of artistic taste 

 must hold that the abnormal and unusual shall never rival the 

 normal or natural. The two characters hold the relation of 

 spice and nutriment. There is at the present time a promi- 

 nent reaction in favor of the older herbaceous perennials and 

 a steadily growing desire for native plants. This ^renaissance 

 of herbaceous perennials," as Edward Lincoln happily char- 



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