WINTEE AND SPRING BEDDING IN FLOWER GARDENS. 67 



plants as Early Pansies, in colours blue, purple, and white ; 

 Forget-me-not, Silene pendula, Limnanthes Douglasii, Double 

 Daisies, and similar easily-raised plants, to secure on the surface 

 of the beds during winter some little greenery, and in the late 

 spring very striking masses of colour. But in those days we 

 had not the hardy material at hand for the production of spring 

 bloom that is now so plentiful ; and the Cliveden system, such as 

 it was, suffered from the fact, first, that the plants used were 

 for several months flat, and utterly ineffectual in affording garden 

 relief ; whilst most of them flowered so late that the spring had 

 almost become summer ere the floral beauty of the plants was 

 seen. Obviously in any method of bedding intended to make a 

 flower garden pleasing during the winter as well as spring, other 

 and very diverse material from that employed at Cliveden has to 

 be introduced, not only for the purpose of rendering beds, if not 

 gay in winter, at least interesting and pleasing, whilst it was 

 imperative that the blooming material should give its florescence 

 so early as March and April rather than in May or June. 



It is interesting to turn for a moment to a very diverse form 

 of bedding, which was practised with such marked success by 

 the late William Wildsmith during what may be termed the palmy 

 days of Heckfield Place. There Mr. Wildsmith had a summer 

 garden of exceeding beauty, so far as it was possible for so 

 artificial a method of gardening as the bedding-out system offers 

 of true garden beauty. He laboured whilst securing floral effects 

 always to furnish pleasing relief, and it was generally admitted 

 that of its kind few summer bedded-out gardens were more 

 beautiful or tasteful. Having to meet the requirements of a 

 family that were in their movements influenced by parliamentary 

 assemblages, it was needful to keep the flower-beds as well filled 

 in winter as in summer, and employing for carpets especially 

 certain hardy plants. These carpet edgings were retained in 

 the winter, and the places of the tender plants were taken by 

 small conifers, evergreen shrubs, hardy heaths, and many things 

 of similar character, including even dark-leaved beet, and thus 

 real winter-bedding was produced that was for the season of 

 the year invariably attractive. For the benefit of this form of 

 bedding a small nursery was maintained, some few things being 

 purchased yearly. But when the family left Heckfield for 

 London in February, the beds were dismantled and became bare 



