nd full of energy and
point. My grandfather seems to have apologized to his bride for the
disorderly state of the garden to which she was about to go home, and
in reply she quaintly and vehemently congratulates herself upon this
unpromising fact. For----"I do so dearly love _grubbing_." This
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 favor), 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 w