BEAUTIFYING THE GARDEN. 
45 
Adding a Touch of Nature to Garden Statuary. 
— In gardens of the older type there often exist examples of 
vases, sundials, fountains, and stone or cement-fringed artificial 
ponds, which have a somewhat gaunt, spectral, and unnatural 
look amidst the more modern and graceful forms of surround- 
ing vegetation. Indeed, they look quite out of place, and the 
question, therefore, arises as to what steps may be taken to 
make them harmonise with the other pleasing features of a 
garden. Fortunately no great difficulty arises in dealing with 
such a problem. Take vases for example. A bed about a 
foot wide or so can be formed at the base, and in this planted 
such graceful plants as Anthericums, Campanulas, tall Antirr- 
hinums, Pentstemons, and Columbines, carpeted with Violas, 
Pansies, Sedums, Arabis, etc. These will tone down the harsh 
formal lines of the base of the vase. In the vase itself such 
trailing plants as Tropaeolums, Ivy-leaved Pelargoniums, Petu- 
nias, Nepeta glechoma variegata, and Lobelias will form an 
elegant fringe to the summit, and thus add to the charm of the 
whole arrangement. 
In the same way the base of the pedestal of a sundial may 
be beautified by colonies of hardy plants, and the pedestal 
itself clothed with a few shoots of variegated Ivy or of Vitis 
heterophylla variegata. The harsh margins of a fountain, 
basin, or an ornamental pond may also be given a touch of 
nature by planting around it colonies of hardy Ferns, Irises, 
Day Lilies, ornamental Grasses, etc., names of which are given 
further on in this work. A simple fringe of vegetation like 
this transforms an otherwise harsh-looking object into an 
elegant, graceful, and pleasing feature. 
And then there are balustrades connected with the garden 
terrace which in earlier days would have been considered a 
serious thing to have obscured with vegetation, because the 
beauty of their design was deemed to be of the highest 
importance in garden decoration. Nowadays, however, they 
are considered incomplete without the presence of climbing 
plants rambling over them. The most suitable of all hardy 
climbers for such a purpose are the varieties of the Rambler, 
Wichuraiana and Noisette Roses. Their free rambling shoots, 
laden with a wealth of flowers in summer, render them par 
excellence ideal plants for such an object. The Wistarias, too, 
when well established, are grand free-growing climbers, and so 
