18 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, October 12, 1858. 
driest season, and the poorest soil, suit this Lantana best. 
These beds of Lantana crocea were as symmetrical, and as 
much covered with bloom, as any bed of a Verbena that 
was ever seen. 
General Simpson is the best scarlet Verbena they have ; 
at least it stood the sun better than Defiance and Lord, 
JRaglan, where three or four dozens of hinds of Verbena 
went wrong altogether. 
Calceolaria inteqr folia foribunda has done remarkably 
well, and better than any other kind of that race. It is 
the principal kind of Calceolaria at the Crystal Palace, 
and, therefore, a sure kind in all weathers. There is not 
an edging to any of the flower-beds here, as at Kew, and 
the Crystal Palace ; but a greater attention is paid here to 
the harmony of colours, than to contrasts. Symmetry 
is also one of the points on which much stress is laid. 
In these public gardens, where the great bulk of the 
visitors know little or nothing about the laws of colours, 
the best plan would seem to be that which is most likely 
to attract the attention of the crowd. Get the multitude 
first into a frame of eye, so to speak, to see flowers, by 
presenting them in brilliant masses of the strongest 
colours,—a blaze, in fact. Then will be the time to pre¬ 
sent them scientifically ; but not by the scale of the rain¬ 
bow-like planters, or that of the decorative painters, like 
Chevreul, whose scales and principles are altogether inap¬ 
plicable to flower gardening, as The Cottage Gaedenee 
lias had to maintain, hitherto single handed ; while power¬ 
ful writers, in contemporary works, pinned their faith in 
the art to the bow in the clouds, and to the labours of 
the cloudless painters. Put, through the agency of the 
great comet,-—I do not say whether on this earth, or mil¬ 
lions of miles from it,—the clouds have cleared up, the 
atmosphere is free, and the Doctor has recanted. 
Dr. Lindley and his satellites stood up for the all- 
sufficiency of M. E. Chevreul, “ director of the dye 
works of the Gobelins,” in all matters relating to the dis¬ 
position of flowers and flowering plants, till they had no 
leg to stand on. The ladies as firmly stood to their text 
in our pages ; the Crystal Palace took up their cue ; and 
IIew followed. Chiswick alone stood in the background, 
and it was seen even here, at last, that flower gardening 
must be something different from dying, or decorating in 
water colours. The chromatic scales spoiled Dr. Lindley’s 
Crocuses, and Chevreul, like Gordon, was thrown over¬ 
board with as little ceremony as if he had never been his 
right-hand man on colours. Put what will his disciples 
say to all this rashness ? Will they, too, eat the leek, 
and kick the Frenchman P That I know not; but I shall 
have less reason, in future, to be so particular in telling 
what the ladies say and require in the flower garden, and 
I shall have more confidence in the Doctor, who only 
wants his confession to be purged from a little heresy, to 
render him a good authority in the flower-garden. He 
says, in effect, provided you adopt symmetry for the 
foundation, all flowers or colours will do well enough side 
by side. This is what I called “ heights and colours,” 
providing you have no steps in a bed or border, by plant¬ 
ing low plants next to high ones. The colours do not 
signify so much as people might think, according to the 
Doctor’s confession; but the one is just as essential as 
the other. All the symmetry on earth will not help some 
colours from destroying the effect of other colours,— 
drowning them, as I say, when they are placed together; 
and not only that, but, by-and-by, he will learn that a 
certain breadth of some colours is necessary, before some 
two colours can be made to agree with a good eyesight. 
He will also learn that what they have said about rays of 
light, and of colours, and also about complementary 
colours, has very little reference to the disposition of 
flowers out of a nosegay, and that little reference is more 
for the imagination, than for the image in the eye. 
From what Dr. Lindley published and praised years 
ago, from Chevreul, I made up my mind I should never 
read a word of that book. Mr. Donald, the curator at 
Hampton Court Gardens, offered me the loan of that 
book soon after he came to this neighbourhood. I told 
him I would sooner read the Koran. Put, after the 
Doctor’s conversion, I asked the favour of a reading, 
and I have the book now for the first time. I find it to 
be exactly what a great lady told me of it, four years 
back,—“It is a charming book on dress and decoration, 
but nothing on the flower garden.” It is more than that: 
it contains a dangerous heresy, to get into the hands or 
heads of young gardeners. 
Two or three of the boys who made the nosegays under 
me at Shrubland Park had a much better eye for flowers 
than Chevreul; but I see he tries his hand at them also. 
Chevreul, and all his followers on flowers, Doctor Lindley 
among the rest, mistook the first natural principle of 
pictures, good or bad, out of flowers. No one can alter 
that principle, and without the alteration, all the rules of 
colours, and scales of colours, go for nothing in flower 
gardening. The principle is, that every colour we use is 
placed in the centre of two other colours, whether we can 
see them or not; and, being so placed by God, who made 
them, and who made our eye to see them to the best ad¬ 
vantage, on the natural system,—His system,-—all other 
systems, or all the artificial systems, are necessarily 
wrong ; and the more artificial the system is, the farther 
it is from the natural system, and the more wrong it is. 
The natural system is, that the deepest and most intense 
colours, as well as the weakest colours, of all our bedding 
plants, is in the centre of a green of equal or unequal in¬ 
tensity,—the inequality not depending on the strength of 
the colour ; and both the green and the colour on it, are 
covered over equally with a third natural colour, a light 
grey, which is the best term for the light of our sun, 
over and around a bed of flowers. When you put two 
rows of plants, as in a ribbon,—say, a scarlet row, and a 
yellow row,—and read the colours across, you will find 
then this green, scarlet, green, yellow, green ; grey, or 
any other name for sunlight, covers the green, and the 
red, and yellow, equally. Put the eyte cannot measure 
the colour of light, and that is why a white flower agrees 
with every other flower, and why a band of white will 
restore the accord, or agreement, of two opposing colours. 
A white flower is so many more degrees of light, as it 
were, as compared with sunlight. 
Complementary colours, as they call them, can, therefore, never 
be obtained from flowers growing on plants, because all flowers 
are then on one complementary colour, green, of various in¬ 
tensity. Even if you cut off the flowers, and cover the ground 
with the petals of Tom Thumb, you cannot get one clear colour; 
and, without two clear colours, what is the use or value of a com¬ 
plementary colour ? The reason why the bed of petals of Tom 
Thumb is not a clear colour is, that so many dark spaces inter¬ 
vene all over the bed, that the light on those furrows amounts to a 
grey. Now, cover the bed with a piece of scarlet cloth, and the 
next bed with a piece of yellow cloth, and let there be no kind of 
colour between the two,—as a strip of grass, or gravel,—and the 
two will give their own complementary colours, but not other¬ 
wise. Therefore, to cover a flower garden after Chevreul, or after 
any of the scales for colours, you must needs cover every inch of 
the ground, every colour with its own piece of cloth, all to meet 
at the edges, and sunlight is the only ground colour, or supposed 
colour. If the Chevreulites allow us a peep of the grass, their scale 
is “ done for.” 
Applying this natural principle to a place like Hampton Court, 
where every bed is at the same distance from the walk, and from 
one another, and is of the same size as the rest, one might think 
that every bed could stand on its own merits, without reference 
to the bed before or behind it. But it is far otherwise. If there 
were no grass or leaves, it is probable that each bed might be in¬ 
dependent of the rest, not otherwise. 
The natural rule to represent colours on the natural system in 
one continuous line, as in promenade beds, is extremely simple 
after you once see it in practice. Mr. Donald has fixed on plant¬ 
ing all these beds, in future, on that natural system. Ho showed 
me his plan, and I agreed with him altogether, except in the 
value of some kinds of plants for neutrals. But that we have all 
of us yet to learn from experience. 
