36 
THE FLOEAL WOELD AND GAEDEN GUIDE. 
Dinner-table decorations, with cut flowers and fruit, require 
great taste in their arrangement. They should always be fitted up 
in a light and elegant style ; nothing stiff or clumsy should be 
allowed. 
Yases of numerous designs and in various styles in Etruscan 
ware, terra-cotta, porcelain, glass, and metal, can be purchased from 
the dealers in any size you require, and the trumpet glasses used for 
table decoration can be obtained in all sizes from nine inches to 
three feet in height. Zinc pans, neatly enamelled or painted, are 
used for protecting the carpet in rooms from water drippings and 
damp, when large plants, or arrangements of plants are used. Eor 
smaller plants requiring to be nearer the light, rustic jardinets, or 
ornamental flower-stands, made of wood, wire, or wickerwork, are 
used with good effect. Ornamental flower-stands should always be 
furnished with a zinc pan inside, to prevent any excess of water 
while watering the plants dripping down on the floor. Brown or 
varnished wicker baskets and pot covers are excellent receptacles 
for pot plants. They should be high enough to conceal the pot 
entirely, and the surface of the pots should be covered with Hypnum 
moss. Pot plants arranged in zinc pans and flower-stands should 
always be provided with flats to stand in ; the superfluous water 
collects in them after watering, and is easily removed without 
causing any overflow or mess of any kind. When arranging pot 
plants in a flower-stand, a very pretty effect is produced by filling 
all round the pots with damp moss or sand, and placing cut 
flowers and fern fronds over the surface. This can be carried out 
in many little wavs when abundance of flowers are at hand. For 
instance, a common small tray or soup-plate can be filled with damp 
sand, and fern fronds and grasses laid round the edge, and cut 
flowers neatly arranged over them. This makes a pretty table 
ornament, and is within anybody’s reach. 
In arranging plants in rooms, a great deal of taste is required; 
in fact, on this depends, to a great extent, the beauty and useful- 
ness of plants used for that purpose. It must always be remembered 
that before we get the plants we use in our rooms they are grown 
in large, airy, well-lighted and ventilated greenhouses, and that it 
is against the law of nature to consign them from such quarters to 
a dark, hot, stifling room. Of course the same amount of light 
cannot be obtained in a room as they enjoyed in the greenhouse. 
It is this difficulty, therefore, that we must try to overcome as 
far as we can. Plants, therefore, should be arranged in a room 
so that they may enjoy the light and air as far as circumstances 
will allow. Some plants can stand for a considerable length 
of time in a darkened corner of a room, with little or no harm 
being done them, such as Dracoenas, Palms, Agaves, Aloes, Ivy, and 
the Ficus elastica, or India-rubber plant ; they all have hard jeathery 
leaves, and are able to stand the dry arid air of a room with 
impunity, but all soft-wooded, quick-growing plants, such as 
Fuchsias, Geraniums, or Pelargoniums, Cinerarias, etc., suffer 
severely if kept from the light. You should therefore have them 
always as near the light as possible, and change them every other 
