Ornamentals, 



57 



the rougher elements of nature are overcome that the quieter 

 joys of the garden appeal to the popular mind. 



Much professional study has been given to the best ways 

 of growing plants for show-purposes and the methods of 

 exhibiting them. Several departures are to be seen in 

 the recent exhibitions, of which the most striking and most 

 gratifying is the practice of grouping plants for their com- 

 bined effects. This demands an artistic feeling on the part g r o e up i ng 

 of the exhibitor, and it constitutes a distinct educational force of plants, 

 as to the best use of ornamental plants. Not only are indi- 

 vidual exhibits grouped or arranged in an artistic way, but 

 the whole show is intended to present some harmonious and 

 simple arrangement under the hand of a single designer. 

 Plants, therefore, come to have a double use and meaning, a 

 value as individual specimens and a greater value as a part 

 of an artistic composition. And this accounts for the interest 

 which the florists have taken during the year in the discussion 

 of the aesthetics of color, under the leadership of F. Schuyler 

 Mathews.* This artistic feature of flower-shows is promi- 

 nent in England and elsewhere. The following editorial 

 comment from an English journal is in point : f " The flower- 

 shows of 1 891 are now practically over, and looking upon them 

 from an object-lesson point of view they clearly point in one 

 direction. All the most satisfactory groups of plants, for in- 

 stance, that call forth double skill, are those that have been 

 arranged for effect. This shows an education acquired by 

 some gardeners unknown to many in the past. The skilled 

 competitor has not only to grow his plants well, but he has to 

 group them together to have a pleasing effect ; and not in 

 the matter of color only, but of feature in respect to the blend- 

 ing of foliage as well as of flowers, and beyond and above all, 

 the grouping. This is the most artistic work of modern 

 gardening, and entitles the gardener who excels his neigh- 

 bor in the double skill of growth and manner of arrange- 

 ment, to a double-first, like the successful competitors in 

 our universities of learning. The public, who really form the 

 backbone of any society they patronize, are constrained to 

 look at this — not with the sort of furtive glance which charac- 

 terizes many of their movements in looking at so many plants, 

 either distinguished for flower or foliage — and they go back 



*See discussions in American Florist for the year, f Northern Gardener > vi. 389. 



