s touches
another point. She was a botanist, and painted a little. So were most
of the lady gardeners of her youth. The education of women was, as a
rule, poor enough in those days; but a study of "the Linnean system"
was among the elegant accomplishments held to "become a young woman";
and one may feel pretty sure that even a smattering of botanical
knowledge, and the observation needed for third or fourth-rate
flower-painting, would tend to a love of variety in beds and borders
which Ribbon-gardening would by no means satisfy. _Lobelia erinus
speciosa_ does make a wonderfully smooth blue stripe in sufficient
quantities, but that would not console any one who knew or had painted
_Lobelia cardinalis_, and _fulgens_, for the banishment of these from
the garden.

I think we may dismiss Ribbon-gardening as unfit for a botanist, or
for any one who happens to like _grubbing_, or tending his flowers.

Is it ever "fit" in a little garden?

Well, if the owner has either no taste for gardening, or no time, it
may be the shortest and brightest plan to get some nurseryman near to
fill the little beds and borders with Spring bedding plants for
Spring (and let me note that this _Spring bedding_, which is of later
date than the first rage for ribbon-borders, had to draw its supplies
very largely from "herbaceous stuff," _myosotis_, _viola_, _aubretia_,
_iberis_, &c., and may have paved the way for the return of hardy
perennials into favour), and with Tom Thumb Geranium, Blue Lobelia,
and Yellow Calceolaria for the summer and autumn. These latter are
most charming plants. They are very gay and persistent whilst they
last, and it is not their fault that they cannot stand our winters.
They are no invalids till frost comes. With my personal predilections,
I like even "bedding stuff" best in variety. The varieties of what we
call geraniums are many and most beautiful. 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!_

Ev