MODERN GARDENING 
3i5 
Battersea, and others, and are largely attended. On a Sunday 
morning during November crowds of men may be seen waiting 
their turn to walk through the green-house where the display is 
on view. Nor are societies wanting to assist individual effort in 
the distribution of seeds, and encouragement by rewards for 
window-boxes. The appreciation of such efforts was shown 
when a “ Country in Town ” exhibition was held in White¬ 
chapel in 1906 and the two following years, as over 50,000 
people visited it during the fortnight it was open. 
The changes that have come over the style of gardening 
are nowhere more apparent than in town parks. There is 
still a great deal of " bedding out,” which is indispensable owing 
to the drawback of smoke ; but the arrangement of flowers is 
no longer stiff nor the colours crude. Three times a year, in 
spring, summer, and autumn, in many of the large parks, the 
plants are changed, each time producing some new combination 
of colour. The herbaceous borders have also been largely in¬ 
creased, and the margins of artificial lakes have been fringed 
with aquatic plants. The most conspicuous change of all has 
been the planting of thousands of bulbs in the grass, which 
produce charming effects in the spring. Not only have existing 
parks been beautified, but great efforts have been made to lay 
out new open spaces in all populous centres. Few of these 
consist merely of grass and trees, but as a rule a regular garden 
is kept up as well. 
A further development is the creation of “ Garden Suburbs ” 
or even “ Garden Cities.” The very fact that such a combina¬ 
tion of words, which hitherto merely expressed a contradiction 
in terms, should have come into everyday use, shows perhaps, 
more than anything else, what a necessity of life a garden is 
now considered by a large section of the community. 
All that is being done to stimulate a taste for the beautiful 
in Nature and to foster an appreciation of flowers cannot fail 
to have an effect on the gardens of the twentieth century. 
No one can safely prophesy, but there seems every indication 
that the marked revival of horticulture in all its branches with 
which the century opened is likely to be a lasting one. With 
all the improved methods of scientific gardening, and all the 
