CHAPTER II. 
THE PARTERRE. 
Geometric gardens may be designed on paper by selecting 
some part of the pattern of a carpet or wall paper, or by 
placing a few bits of coloured paper in the debuscope, and 
then copying the multiple scheme so produced. Numbers of 
designs have been obtained in that way, and about one in a 
hundred have actually turned out worthy; the rest were not 
worth the paper they were drawn on, unless it might be to 
make burlesque of the bedding system. It is a most rare 
event for a really complicated plan to prove effective, however 
skilfully planted ; and so I begin this chapter by advising the 
beginner to avoid the schemes which combine a great variety 
of figures, such as ovals, hearts, diamonds, horns of plenty, 
and true lovers’ knots. Elaborate designs are, of course, not to 
be contemned, for we find them constituting important features 
in many great gardens, and employing the highest artistic 
talent in garden colouring. It is above all things necessary, 
in an elementary book of this sort, to guard beginners against 
making costly mistakes, and the formation of the parterre is 
a business requiring more than ordinary caution to guard 
against waste of time and money, and all the consequent 
vexation and disappointment. In what we may call “ a quiet 
garden” of limited dimensions, a few large beds, far separated 
by well-kept turf will, in many cases, give far more satisfaction 
than a distinctive geometric scheme, and necessitate, perhaps, 
only a twentieth of the time and attention to keep them suit¬ 
ably gay, besides offering the peculiar advantage that each 
bed may be planted to produce an effect of its own without 
any special reference to the rest, so long as it is decidedly 
different. The common repetition of oblongs and circles 
which we meet with in public gardens, where long walks de¬ 
mand flowery dressings, is one of the most effective and satis- 
