MARCH. 
63 
drooping plants, came with tardy feet. Man is slow to learn that Nature is 
not only our wisest teacher in such matters hut our greatest artist. He is 
so proud of his little brief authority over Nature, that he tries to govern her 
as an absolute sovereign; but he learns sooner or later that it wo’n’t answer. 
If we are to govern Nature at all, our government must be constitutional. 
Nature’s voice must be heard, and her wishes obeyed. 
It seems strange that gardeners have hardly yet learned this lesson. 
While the painter has been endeavouring for centuries to dip his brushes 
into the brilliant colours of Nature, we have been slow to learn the laws of 
form and shape from her infinitely varied and inimitably perfect lines of 
beauty. It only seems yesterday when the rule of red tape carried all 
before it in these matters. The law was to tie every plant, whatever its 
habit, up to a straight stick. The most conspicuous difference among plants 
consisted in the length and consequent thickness of their poles. The art of 
arrangement was measured solely by a knowledge of feet and inches. 
Tallest to the back, 6 inches shorter next row, 6 inches less next, and so 
on, until a line of dwarfs was marshalled in front, and stood like a regi¬ 
ment of living mummies. They were marched out and reviewed, passed 
through the various evolutions of pot-scrubbing, surface-scraping, top¬ 
dressing, fresh propping or tieing, or perhaps shifting, and then carefully 
marched back again. With green slime removed, worms caught, and new 
dispositions in reference to height made, the cultivator felt his half-yearly 
work done, and surveyed them with more pedantic pride than is felt by the 
modern exhibitor as he walks from Kensington or the Regent’s Park with 
half a dozen first prizes in his pocket. If an individual plant dared to mani¬ 
fest self-willed individuality during these long intervals, a speedy remedy 
was ever at hand to secure uniformity. It was brought down to the dead 
level of law with the thrust of a sharp knife, or bent and kept down with a 
choking tie. 
Well, thanks to various influences, good garden literature perhaps more 
than all others, we have had a glorious revolution since those days. I think 
it would scarcely be possible to find one such regiment of skeleton plants in 
Britain now. Nature has so far defied red tape that she dares to be free ! 
Our training must now be for, not against her. If we ever ruin or distort 
her charms now the injury is not intentional. I do not say that all our 
staking is wise or beneficial, but it is meant to be so. It is easier, how¬ 
ever, to condemn stakes than to find a substitute for them, or to get plants 
in houses to support themselves with their heavy burdens of flowers without 
them. Were all our plant-houses flooded with light as they ought to be, 
and will be in the future, and plants could remain at rest where they have 
grown, the most of our stakes might be dispensed with. But travellers must 
have something to lean against. The pedestrian had his stout cudgel, and 
the modern traveller the hard seat of a third-class or the luxuriant cushion 
of a first-class carriage. And plants on their travels must have such as 
these, or equivalents for them. 
But what a relief to get away from stakes or trellises to basket culture, 
which dispenses with them all! The plants are dependent indeed, though not 
on artificial props, but on the all-embracing air. They droop down beauty, 
it falls from them in showers ; they iveep it is true, but it only heightens 
their charms, and the tears they shed are sunshiny ones of joy. 
We have a large choice of plants for this purpose. The whole race of 
climbing plants that will bloom in small compass, fine-foliaged climbing 
plants such as Cissus, &c., Fuchsias, Saxifrages, Sedums, Tradescantias, 
