TWO STYLES OF DESIGN AND THE PROPER PLACE FOR EACH IN THE GARDEN SCHEME 
—SOIL, PLANTING AND CULTURAL DIRECTIONS TO ATTAIN THE BEST RESULTS 
BY E. O. Calvene 
Photographs by Nathan R. Graves and Others 
LIERE are two ways of handling bulbs, just as 
there are two ways of handling all kinds of 
flowers. The definitely designed garden is 
one — the garden which is commonly called 
“formal” — while the happy carelessness of a 
border here and another there, where oppor¬ 
tunity seems to offer, and naturalized masses 
in long grass, is the other. Each has its 
merits and advantages; each makes its dis¬ 
tinct appeal to a distinct temperament; and 
actually, neither one precludes the other. 
One may encourage bulbs to grow as Nature 
scatters daisies and buttercups, and still have 
a prim, trim garden wherein stately iris and 
pallid lilies preserve the stiff decorum becom¬ 
ing in the gentlefolk of bygone days. 
In planning a formal bulb garden, the 
same three things must guide in selecting 
species and varieties that guide wherever 
flowers are used together: namely, the 
height, time of flowering, and the color. And 
the formal design must of course have its proper center, however 
small and simple it may be. From some point it must develop 
symmetrically along an axis, and from this point it should be ap¬ 
proached and here the main entrance to it should be located. 
It may be laid down as an axiom that formal designs are never 
effective if the corresponding portions are carried out with plants 
that vary greatly in height. In order to preserve the symmetry 
and continuity of the whole, vertical proportions must correspond 
as well as the horizontal. Take for example the simplest form—a 
square divided into four triangular corner plots by a walk running 
in to a grass plot at the center, from each of the four sides. If the 
first plot on the right is planted with specimens that reach a height 
of two feet, while the corresponding plot on the opposite side of 
the axis — otherwise on the left — is filled with growth that reaches 
a height of four feet, the symmetry is completely destroyed and 
with it the design too, to all practical purposes. But right and left 
plots nearest at hand may contain tall growing plants and the two 
plots beyond may be filled with lower growing ones without im¬ 
pairing the effect. It is only on either side of the main axis that 
there must be corresponding proportion, ordinarily; but it is un¬ 
doubtedly always better to maintain a fair measure of it through¬ 
out a design. 
As for the fancy beds in which tulips and hyacinths commonly 
find themselves, what is there to say for these? Have they a place 
anywhere in the world ? Public squares are perhaps improved by 
beds; such squares in parks, and the ground at the base of statues 
and monuments, as well as cemeteries and railroad stations—are 
of course of all spots the stiffest and most formal; consequently 
they demand an exceedingly formal and ceremonial treatment. 
That a round, smooth mound bristling with pink hyacinths which 
circle around a mass of white hyacinths, and are in turn encircled 
by a mass of blue, the whole belted with a deeper pink perhaps, is 
not the ideal, would seem to be a rather obvious fact; but even this 
arrangement brings color and life where both are eagerly craved. 
But anywhere else there is not the ghost of an excuse for fancy 
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