and bright leaves may be freely scattered along the borders and near the
foliage masses.

It is a common saying that many persons have no love or appreciation of
flowers, but it is probably nearer to the truth to say that no person is
wholly lacking in this respect. Even those persons who declare that they
care nothing for flowers are generally deceived by their dislike of
flower-beds and the conventional methods of flower-growing. I know many
persons who stoutly deny any liking for flowers, but who, nevertheless,
are rejoiced with the blossoming of the orchards and the purpling of the
clover fields. The fault may not lie so much with the persons themselves
as with the methods of growing and displaying the flowers.

Defects in flower-growing.

The greatest defect with our flower-growing is the stinginess of it. We
grow our flowers as if they were the choicest rarities, to be coddled in
a hotbed or under a bell-jar, and then to be exhibited as single
specimens in some little pinched and ridiculous hole cut in the turf, or
perched upon an ant-hill that some gardener has laboriously heaped oh a
lawn. Nature, on the other hand, grows many of her flowers in the most
luxurious abandon, and one can pick an armful without offense. She grows
her flowers in earnest, as a man grows a crop of corn. One can revel in
the color and the fragrance and be satisfied.

The next defect with our flower-growing is the flower-bed. Nature has no
time to make flower-bed designs: she is busy growing flowers. And, then,
if she were given to flower-beds, the whole effect would be lost, for
she could no longer be luxurious and wanton, and if a flower were picked
her whole scheme might be upset. Imagine a geranium-bed or a coleus-bed,