NINETEENTH CENTURY 299 
many grasped it eagerly. Mr. William Robinson was the first 
to point out the true remedy. Although he advocated a 
complete revolution in the garden, and brought in a new 
style, known as “ wild gardening/' and had little sympathy 
with bedding at all, he helped to make it less stiff and more 
lasting by pointing out that less tender plants might have as 
good an effect, and give a longer period of interest to the beds. 
One of the first gardens given up to formal beds he prescribed 
for was Shrublands, where at his suggestion they were filled 
with carnations, roses, and other hardy plants. Masses of 
colour and contrasts were obtained by groups of tall scarlet 
Lobelia surrounded by Centaurea ragusina , and similar com¬ 
binations with violas or “ tufted pansies," Pentstemons, 
Snapdragons, and so on. In many gardens more permanent 
flowers were placed in beds which had for fifty years been given 
up to Geraniums. Paeonies, with daffodils between the clumps, 
so that the yellow should appear among the deep red spring 
growth, with auratum lilies to rise from out the dark green 
foliage when the blooms were over, and many such-like effects, 
gradually came to be practised. The bringing back into 
gardens the numerous hardy plants which were banished, 
and in many cases ruthlessly torn up and thrown away, when 
the rage for “ bedding-out " came in, was the greatest improve¬ 
ment of the end of the nineteenth century. They once again 
began to hold their proper place, and with all the new species 
which every year came to swell the list of those which will 
endure our cold climate, more lovely effects could be pro¬ 
duced than were possible with the stiff bedding plants of forty 
years before. Only a few people wished to discard these half- 
hardy things altogether. Green-houses, a blaze of bright 
colours with tuberous Begonias, or some such flowers, are a 
wonderful sight, and even from a practical point of view it 
is a good plan to make room in the houses by planting out some 
of these in the summer months. Very different is this arrange¬ 
ment from devoting all the glass to nurture up geraniums to 
fill the whole garden. Bacon's aim was to have flowers in 
the garden during every month of the year, and in his essay 
he mentions some for each successive season. After a lapse 
of three centuries it dawned upon gardeners that it ought to 
