Flowers and Gardens 



sun shining through the latter gave it a 

 transparency which made it glow like 

 wine. I would sooner have had those 

 two neglected flowers than all the exhi- 

 bition. 



But there is a second way, more im- 

 portant even than the last, in which the 

 modern system tends to injure a healthy 

 taste for flowers — I allude to the custom 

 of putting out plants in the beds just for 

 the period of bloom, and then removing 

 them, as if both before and after flower- 

 ing they were destitute of interest. A 

 garden is, in fact, no longer the home 

 of plants, where all ages, the young, the 

 mature, and the decayed, mix freely and 

 in easy dress. It has degenerated into a 

 mere assembly-room for brilliant parties, 

 where childhood and age are both alike 

 out of place. In some gardens the system 

 is carried out plainly and unaffectedly. 

 There are no spring flowers at all worth 

 mentioning, but sufficiency of shrubs and 

 evergreens to make the place look neat ; and 

 we see the main space occupied by large 

 bare beds, which will receive the summer 

 visitors when they come. About the be- 

 ginning of May, these half-hardy plants 

 are put in, and miserably uninteresting 

 they look for a while, till at length they 



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