256 FLOWERS AND BEDDING PLANTS, 
Fig. 51. 
engraving at the end of this chapter. This would require a different 
style of planting. Supposing its base to be four feet in diameter, 
there would be a margin of two feet all around it for low trailing 
flowers. The design for a basket-vase is intended for an open lawn, 
and shows a collection of plants quite different from what would be 
best for the design under consideration. Here we would have for 
its centre a single group of the Canna sangiiinea chatei, surrounded 
by a circle of Japanese maize ; next a circle of Salvia argentea, and 
for the outside border the Lady Pollock geranium inter-planted with 
some of the slender, drooping, light-leaved plants, named farther on 
in this chapter, for the decoration of vases. 
If this central bed is to have neither a pedestal-vase nor basket- 
vase, it may still be made the most conspicuous point of interest in 
the parterre with plants alone. It is desirable that the lawn should 
rise gently towards it on all sides, and that the bed be raised in 
the centre as much as may be without making the earth liable to 
be washed upon the lawn. In the centre, if this flower-garden is 
intended to be perjjianent, we would plant the remarkable variety of 
the European silver fir, known as the Picea pectinata pendula, or 
the variety of the Norway spruce, known as the Abies excelsa in- 
verta, shown in Fig. 52 ; and around it a circle of the tallest Japan 
lilies j next a circle of the mountain-of-snow geranium alternated 
