HINTS ON FLOWER GARDENING. 
159 
j )lic would feel an interest in them, and they would be properly supported ; but so 
1 a as they are inferior in point of attraction to second or even third-rate private 
( ablishments, it is preposterous to expect the public to take any interest in them. 
r is may appear to be a digression from our subject ; but we make it for the 
i rpose of shewing how much we expect from those societies which have gardens, 
, j to show how we think they ought to contribute to the progress of cultivation 
il decorative gardening. Suppose the garden of the Horticultural Society of 
ndon, instead of being what it is in point of design and arrangement, had been 
d out as it ought to have been, or as some of our leading landscape gardeners 
uld lay it out at the present time, with spacious lawns and flower-gardens, 
lendid plant-houses, and a kitchen and fruit-garden replete with every necessary in 
3 way of forcing-houses, which the most fastidious could desire, and that every 
partment had been kept in the highest possible trim ; would it not have been 
jtter supported than it has been, and also have been more deserving of support? 
jie same remarks apply to almost every public garden in Great Britain ; they 
I e badly supported, not so much from a want of taste on the part of the public, 
horn the fact of the several establishments not offering sufficient attraction to 
terest the public in their proper management. Only imagine the vast influence 
. ese societies would exert over the public mind if they were managed in first-rate 
yle, and were examples of superior cultivation, as from the thousands and tens of 
ousands which visit them annually, the majority of whom may be considered to be 
terested in horticulture, great good must result. 
Now, to proceed with our subject as connected with the principles of flower- 
irdening, the prevailing errors are those of planting flower-gardens without properly 
irmonising or contrasting the colours ; planting tall plants in small beds, and small 
: Lants in large ones ; neglecting to train or regulate the plants as they progress in 
rowth, so as to get the plants in proper and appropriate shapes ; and growing a 
jiiantity of comparatively worthless plants for sake of a collection, when half the 
uantity of the best kinds would not only suffice, but would be far more effective as a 
eneral arrangement, and decidedly more interesting to the common observer. For 
xample, we cannot see the necessity for cultivating a hundred different varieties of 
erbenas, when more plants of fifteen or twenty of the best and most distinct kinds 
ould answer the purpose better ; neither can we see the necessity of filling fifty beds 
ith fifty different plants, when twenty kinds would be equally appropriate, and make 
far more effective arrangement. No, no ; the whole of our plant collections require 
severe weeding : at least one-half of the flower-garden plants at present cultivated 
hould be thrown to the winds, and have their places filled by less rare but more 
howy plants. We do not wish to see all the inferior plants banished entirely, as 
ome of the best of them, though unfit for masses, may be admissible for the mixed 
•order, and there will make a fine display. What we want for massing in the 
lower-gardens are plants of close, compact, dense habit, producing abundance of 
'right clear flowers, not by fits and starts as some do, but throughout the season, 
