HARDY FLOWER BORDERS 19 



them, we must give preference to methods which impose 

 no limits upon their life and usefulness. 



The hardy flower border — not necessarily the herb- 

 aceous border — is the simplest and by far the most 

 effective arrangement of plants for the small garden. 

 For cottage gardens it may be said to be the only 

 system. Not only does it permit of flowers being seen 

 in their natural grace and beauty, but it is the most 

 economical and least artificial of all schemes of culture. 

 Its great charm is its permanence, and it may here be 

 remarked that no method of flower growing which 

 entails constant planting and replanting, transference of 

 seedlings to pots and boxes, raising in hothouses with 

 subsequent hardening off in frames, has anything to 

 recommend it for the style of garden we are considering. 

 Summer bedding has been the ruin of English gardens, 

 and has done more than anything to stifle in people's 

 minds the love of flowers for their own sake. To fill 

 each year a certain set of beds with the same stereotyped 

 contents, to propagate geraniums by the thousand and 

 set them in stiff rows, in triangles, circles, ellipses, and 

 squares, is not gardening any more than the designing 

 of linoleums and mosaic is art. It is a dull, mechanical 

 process involving dexterity without taste, labour without 

 understanding ; regarded aesthetically, economically, and 

 by its results, " bedding-out " has nothing to recommend 

 it ; it is merely a stupid effort to keep alive the tradi- 

 tions of an epoch, which from the point of view of 

 artistic achievement was barren and commonplace to a 

 degree. 



A vast number of beautiful hardy flowers lend them- 

 selves admirably to a permanent system of planting, fore- 

 most among them being such old-fashioned favourites as 

 Hollyhocks, Delphiniums, Iris, Gaillardias, Sunflowers, 

 Campanulas, Anemones, Asters, Poppies, Paeonies, 

 Pyrethrum, and Montbretia. With these, the fragrant 



