108 
THE FLOEIST AND POMOLOGIST. 
climate so versatile as ours; and yet, great as has been the advance made of 
late, we may look forward to much greater and surprising results. There is 
still room for very great improvements in the designs for flower gardens ; also 
in the materials for planting them. The skill of British horticulturists has 
produced a class of “ bedding plants” specially adapted for the parterre, and 
every year adds some valuable gems to this class of plants. To continued im¬ 
provements in these we must look, in a great measure, for producing greater 
and more striking effect in the flower garden. I am not very partial to the 
French parterre, with its scroll of Box, and its smaller beds covered with 
various-coloured materials. These may be very pretty, and when one is first 
made, the novelty may for a time please. 
Many of the designs that are to be met with, though very elaborate and 
pretty, are not well adapted for the massing system of the present day, and 
are often very difficult to plant effectively; there is, in general, too much 
intricacy about them, and the beds too small and angular. It is not unusual 
to find fifty or more beds where a dozen would be much more effective.- In 
small places the evil is worse, through a mistaken idea of making the most of 
the limited space of ground. A number of small beds is too often the chief 
point aimed at. I have, in numbers of places, seen a score of little beds where 
ten would be more effective; and in others half a dozen beds of the most 
extraordinary shapes, where one good-sized bed would look far better. For the 
flower garden, as in everything else, that which is simplest is always the best. 
This is true as to detail; but it is truer, if possible, as to the composition and 
outline. It is very easy to make an intricate design, but very difficult to make 
a simple design good; and this is, in reality, the cause why there are to be 
seen so many designs that are intricate enough, and so few that are simple, 
because so difficult to be made good. In former days, when the materials for 
planting the parterre were very poor, embroidered figures and fanciful designs 
were excusable ; but, with the rich materials we have now-a-days for producing 
such grand and imposing displays, we should have designs which, while in 
character with the mansion, &c., should be such as can be easily planted to 
produce striking effects. 
The charm of the modern parterre depends, in no small degree, on getting 
the beds well covered with flowers early, and keeping it up the whole season, 
until destroyed by the frost in October ; and this is no easy matter in a climate 
so variable and moist as ours. When there are frequent heavy falls of rain in 
July, with hot weather, many kinds of “ bedding” plants run much into 
foliage ; and, as after that time the nights get longer, and heavy dews often 
prevail, the evil increases, until at length there are little or no flowers. 
Again, in very dry seasons like the last, Verbenas, &c., will not cover the 
beds until late in the season, unless well attended to in watering. When 
Petunias, Verbenas, Cupheas, Salvias, Ageratums, Lobelias, Heliotropes, Sec., 
formed the principal materials for massing, it was a most difficult matter to get 
every bed well filled early in the season; there was generally some one thing 
or other that did not thrive satisfactorily, thus marring the whole effect. We 
are now getting a great variety of useful and most beautiful “ bedding” 
Geraniums, which enable us already to dispense with Petunias, many kinds of 
Verbenas, and other things. With a good stock of old plants, and the beds 
properly prepared, the parterre can be made most effective when planted, and, 
with much less attention and labour, can be kept so during the season, than 
when Petunias, &c., formed the principal materials for planting. 
In preparing the beds for the plants, depth of soil is a point of the first 
importance. The soil naturally should be a friable good loam, a sandy nature 
preferable to an adhesive one. - This is easily enriched, when exhausted by 
