66 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



will it endure for yet a long period. We owe the bedding system 

 chiefly to the introduction into flower gardens from time to time 

 of large numbers of diverse and beautiful plants, chiefly tender, 

 that do not make individually any great display, or give marked 

 effects ; but which, grouped in masses, have and do give exceed- 

 ing brilliancy of coloration, and in that way constitute great 

 attraction for those who appreciate such effects. That, to a large 

 extent, summer bedding has lent itself in the past to the pro- 

 duction of garish, and sometimes almost vulgar effects and com- 

 binations, there can be no doubt. Happily, there has been 

 material improvement during the past ten years, and now the 

 tendency seems to be, whilst employing material in exceeding 

 variety, yet so far to tone coloration as to produce effects that 

 are distinctly pleasing and refined. No doubt such improvements 

 have done much to help the bedding practice to a longer life 

 than well could have been the case had the old garish combina- 

 tions continued. But where flower beds are annually filled with 

 tender or semi-tender plants, specially to produce particular 

 summer results, it is obvious that such material could not remain 

 in the beds during the winter months without being either 

 destroyed by frost, or rendered so objectionable as to be the 

 reverse of decorative. That has indeed been the experience of 

 the system from its first inception ; and where existing, the rule 

 has yearly prevailed of planting the beds in spring, clearing off 

 the demoralised contents in the autumn, and then, as was at one 

 time the case, leaving the beds bare all the winter, or filling 

 them with some hardy material suited to produce flowers in the 

 spring, which, in turn, had to be cleared off to make room once 

 more for the summer bedders. Probably the prevailing bareness 

 of the beds during winter presented the severest element in any 

 indictment of the system of summer bedding, because a series of 

 bald bare beds on turf or gravel for one half the year was more 

 offensive than even none at all, and almost more so than were 

 some of the gaudy effects obtained from them in the summer, 

 whilst what may be described as winter bedding never has been 

 widely practised, and is indeed comparatively young. The practice 

 of filling the otherwise bald beds in the late autumn with various 

 hardy spring-flowering plants is almost relatively old, and had for 

 its pioneer Mr. J. Fleming, who at Cliveden did so much in the 

 huge beds on the lawn there, through the agency of such simple 



