I should always prefer a
group of individual specimens to a band of one. And never have I seen
the canary yellow of calceolarias to such advantage as in an
"old-fashioned" rectory-garden in Yorkshire, where they were cunningly
used as points of brilliancy at corners of beds mostly filled with
"hardy herbaceous stuff."
But there, again, one begins to spend time and taste! Let us admit
that, if a little garden must be made gay by the neighbouring
nurseryman, it will look very bright, on the "ribbon" system, at a
minimum cost of time and trouble--_but not of money!_
Even for a little garden, bedding plants are very expensive. For you
must either use plenty, or leave it alone. A ragged ribbon-border can
have no admirers.
If time and money are both lacking, and horticulture is not a hobby,
divide what sum you are prepared to spend on your little garden in
two. Lay out half in making good soil, and spend the rest on a limited
range of hardy plants. If mother earth is well fed, and if you have
got her _deep down_, and not a surface layer of half a foot on a
substratum of builder's rubbish, she will take care of every plant you
commit to her hold. I should give up the back of the borders (if the
aspect is east or south) to a few very good "perpetual" roses to cut
from; dwarfs, not standards; and for the line of colour in front it
will be no great trouble to arrange roughly to have red, white, blue,
and yellow alternately.
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