ON GROUPING ORNAMENTAL PLANTS. 
185 
specimens, is to keep them dwarf, bushy, healthy, and symmetrical, and never to 
suffer them to grow tall without there is plenty of space for them, and all the other 
good properties accompany height. The groups, then, in the beds of conserva- 
tories, should be composed of perfectly detached specimens, and not of banks or 
thickets ; only each specimen should approach and harmonize with its neighbour. 
In short, we would have the modern management of potted plants carried into the 
culture of transplanted ones. There should be no lank drawn up stems, and heads 
growing into one another ; but each individual should stand aloof from the rest, 
and be in itself beautiful and worthy of examination. To effect that, fast-growing 
and widely-spreading plants must be discarded, and those chosen treated as if they 
were in pots ; viz. have their shoots timely kept stopped, and their roots restrained 
within due bounds. 
Although it is an acknowledged rule, in planting conservatory as well as hardy 
shrubs, that those which attain the greatest height should be put in the centre of 
the bed, or the back of a border, it admits of slight deviation in the first case, as 
we have explained that it does in the last. Conservatory specimens, happily, 
cannot be arranged with such extreme formality, because the real habits of the 
plants can rarely be sufficiently known, and so many trivial circumstances affect 
the rate and limits of their extension. However, when the treatment is properly 
regulated, precision enough may be arrived at to enable the planter to secure a 
good variety of surface. The shape and aspect of the plant, the form of the leaves, 
and the colour and figure of its flowers, ought all to be thought of in directing the 
arrangement ; since, notwithstanding the contempt tacitly thrown on these matters 
in conservatories, they are fully as influential there as in greenhouses, flower- 
gardens, and shrubberies. Should the plants be in beds encompassed by a walk, 
there will be a necessity for making the arrangement tolerably regular, only 
varying it a little, as recommended for the small beds of showy shrubs which happen 
to stand on lawns. When the specimens are in borders, the irregularity which we 
have praised in the skirts of external shrubberies may be exactly imitated on a 
smaller scale. 
Potted plants, that are grown in houses, are generally arranged on stages 
consisting of an ascending series of steps, the narrowest at the bottom ; and the 
specimens are placed in a similarly graduated way, the smallest being set on the 
lower step, and the largest on the upper and broader one. Or, the stage is a flat 
one, and the plants are put upon it according to their heights, the lowest being 
placed in the front, and the highest at the back. By either method, a sloping 
bank is formed, which enables the eye of the inspector to pass readily over the 
plants in the foreground, and take in those behind. The appearance, too, is very 
orderly and appropriate. Without interrupting that order, however, or introducing 
anything like confusion, we are of opinion that the shape of stages might be 
altered with great propriety, so as to give more diversity of outline to the group ; 
and that conspicuous large plants, or showy smaller ones elevated on an inverted 
VOL. IX. NO. CIV. B B 
