ON DISPOSING PLANTS IN SHEUBBERIES AND PLANT-HOUSES. 167 
angular outlines — especially sharply angular ones — should be fairly filled out Tvith 
flowers. 
The circular or rotund style of flower-beds certainly offers one of the readiest means 
of promoting variety in Flower-Gardens planted on the grouping or massing system. 
Instead of being entirely filled with one kind of plant, such beds may be very readily 
planted either in zones, or in divergent rays, and from the simplicity of their form, these 
arrangements of the plants, and consequently of the colours, are obvious, and, being 
obvious, they are effective. This can never be the case with intricately fitted angles, 
which, though pretty enough on paper, or even when cut out on the ground, lose all their 
distinctness when the plants come to grow up in them. 
Whether or no circular beds, or beds of rotund character, become more generally 
adopted, it seems to be desirable that an attempt should be made to impart greater variety 
to modern Flower-Gardens, by the more frequent adoption of what may be called 
compound planting, or, in other words, by forming the larger groups or beds in a Flower- 
Garden of several colours in distinct masses, instead of employing one colour only, these 
several colours being so disposed as to harmonise or contrast as the case may be, both 
with those in the same group, and those in the groups adjoining. The individual masses, 
or sub-groups themselves, should be distinctly recognisable both in respect to size and 
outline. Probably almost every garden might in this way be made to contain three or 
four times as many kinds of plants, as if otherwise filled ; and this change might be made 
without any sacrifice of the general effect, but would be rather productive of improvement. 
Touching this very bearing of the subject, it has been pointedly asked, Is a red-cloak more 
elegant than an embroidered shawl ? 
This or some such principles brought into operation would tend greatly to supply 
Flower-Gardens with what they stand much in need of — a greater variety of vegetable 
forms. As it is, too much deference is paid to mere colour. For example, because the 
Verbena combines, with a habit and other characteristics admirably adapting it for grouping, 
considerable variety of colours, mostly brilliant and striking, it is by no means clear, if 
mere colour is to continue the chief object of attraction, that we may not yet live to see 
the time, when the term "Flower Garden," will be almost an equivalent to a " Garden of 
Verbenas." A garden of Verbenas, however, would have nothing like the interest that 
attaches to a garden of varieties. 
ON DISPOSING PLANTS IN SHRUBBERIES AND PLANT-HOUSES. 
By Mr. Kemp, the Park, Birkenhead. 
If any person will take the trouble to examine in detail a border or interior of a plant- 
house which has previously given them pleasure in gazing upon it, they will soon find that 
it owes its beauty and character to a few prominent, taller, and well-shaped or picturesque 
specimens, which have been fortunately or judiciously placed here and there along its front 
lines, so as to throw them into salient points and render the whole length of them worthy 
of inspection. Let such a border or mass be compared with one in which, commencing 
with low plants in the front, each row rises gradually and regularly towards the back and 
forms one continuous bank, the angle of which, taken at any one point, is the angle of all 
the rest ; and the difference between art exercised according to nature, or in aid of her 
arrangements, and art in its simple, unrefined and uncultivated state, will immediately 
be seen. 
All art of the highest kind, and such as gives the greatest satisfaction in its creations 
and combinations, must necessarily be based upon what is natural ; and in landscape- 
gardening especially, the highest and finest forms of beauty will be a carrying out, 
developing, and refining upon the varied features to be found in a natural scene. Hence, 
the principles on which the most agreeable and delightful assemblages of vegetable forms 
