WINTER AND SPRING BEDDING IN FLOWER GARDENS. 



71 



resulting is that the autumn is the best time for the planting of 

 all hardy things, that work is just then less exacting than it is in 

 the spring, and that there is in the renewed planting, largely 

 perhaps with fresh material, certainly with varied material, in 

 the autumn, very desirable charm, because the winter is always 

 a dull garden season, and any new or distinctive effects which 

 can then be produced furnish a charm for garden enjoyment, 

 even more acceptable then than is the case in the early summer, 

 w T hen nature has done so much to add charm to gardening. 

 The planting of the beds with conifers and shrubs varied in 

 form and in coloration, amongst which are interspersed bulbs in 

 great variety in clumps, also hardy perennial foliage and flowering 

 plants, that give their effects during the winter and spring 

 months, admits of material variation in the late spring when 

 much of this latter may be removed and be replaced with such 

 tender plants as the taste of the gardener may prefer, or the 

 particular positions in the beds may render suitable. Certainly 

 in this case, whilst having the beds filled with plants of some 

 description all the year round, it would not be practicable to 

 produce in them those glaring or flat and formal masses of colour 

 at any time, such as large groups of scarlet pelargoniums, yellow 

 calceolarias, gazanias, or marigolds, blue lobelias or even duller 

 petunias, or heliotrope give in the summer, or wallflowers, forget- 

 me-nots, silene, and similar plants, or hyacinths, tulips, and 

 narcissi are made to do in the spring. 



But it must not be assumed because these respective plants 

 and myriads of others may not be thus employed en masse in 

 garden decoration, that they may not be judiciously and even 

 liberally utilised in winter or summer bedding. When some half- 

 century since, or in relation to an event of exceeding interest, 

 which is celebrated this year, shall I suggest sixty years ago, 

 " mixed beds " in flower gardens were common ; they contained 

 even at the best but a very poor floral representation, as com- 

 pared with what can be furnished to-day, not only in hardy but 

 in tender material. Hence such beds were not often very attrac- 

 tive, and equally often not tidy. No doubt the bedding system 

 as it is called largely grew out of a revulsion against such poor 

 unattractive displays, and led to the extreme of huge masses of 

 glaring colours and unhappy combinations which in time resulted. 

 No such reason for revulsion now exists against mixed bedding, for 



