131. - In choosing the flowers for the beds, the best and easiest way is to choose greenhouse plants, which will produce a brilliant effect from May to September, though they will require to be renewed every year, and which, in London, at least, may be procured at a very moderate cost from the hawkers in the streets. But where permanent flowers are preferred, the objects to be kept in view ought to be to have an equal number of kinds of flowers in bloom, if possible, every month in the year, and to have an equal number of the different colours displayed at the same time. This is a sort of beau ideal, which, however, cannot be carried into practice in the winter months; but it is, nevertheless, useful as a guide as to what ought to be selected. Other guides are, that such plants only should be planted as will grow in the same soil, and with the same aspect; that plants placed adjoining each other should not be very different in size and habit of growth when full-grown, lest the one should choke the other, and lest the assemblage should appear inharmonious; nor very different in their natural vigour of growth, lest the roots of the one should occupy a much greater portion of soil than the others.

To plant paeonias, everlasting peas, asters, Papaver orientale, and such like plants in juxtaposition with daisies, hepaticas, and pinks, would be attended with the suffocation of the latter diminutive kinds; but the very tallest and the very lowest plants may be included in the same bed, provided it is very large, and there be a gentle gradation observed between the one and the other. If the bed is to be seen from every side, then the tallest growing kinds can be placed in the centre, and the lowest in the circumference, and the intermediate sizes between them, so as to rise in gradation from the lowest at the margin to the highest in the middle. If the bed is a border, parallel to a walk, and to be seen only on one Bide, then the lowest plants should form a row next the walk, and the others should be placed behind them in quincunx, according to their sizes, the tallest being placed behind, and forming the last row. The distance at which one plant should be kept from another depends more on the habit of the plant with respect to lateral extension, than on the height to which it grows; thus a paeony, which seldom grows above 18 in. high, but which spreads its large leaves over a much greater surface than is occupied by its roots, will require more room than a tall-growing phlox, which will reach the height of 4 ft., and not cover above a square foot of the surface of the border.

Creeping plants also require move room than such as grow compact and bushy, or narrow and erect. The role which we have just given, of not associating plants in the same bed that have different habits, directs that creepers, and climbers or twiners, should always be planted by themselves, or at least, not introduced indiscriminately among other plants. At the same time, a plant with one of these habits, introduced occasionally into a miscellaneous border, has a good effect by contrast. Where creepers alone are employed, if each plant be of a different kind, they ought to be kept as distinct from each other, as busby or tall plants ought to be; but where a bed is entirely filled with creepers of the same kind, then they may be allowed to cover the whole surface of the bed; because the object of the planter in this case must necessarily be to produce a mass of one kind of form and colour. In general, small plants ought to be chosen for small beds, and dwarf-growing plants for beds of irregular figure; but of course this must be regulated by circumstances.

132. The back garden has fruit-trees against all the walls, and some standards and dwarfs in the central beds. The spaces h h, in both gardens, are supposed to be devoted to annual crops, such as peas, spinach, salading, etc. The beds marked i, in both gardens, may be planted with asparagus, sea-kale, and tart rhubarb. The potherbs are supposed to be grown in the borders next the walls. The three fruit-trees at k are Hawthornden apples (standards), for immediate effect in bearing, and to be cut out in a few years after the three rows of dwarf-trees, shown in each garden, have come into full bearing. If the front gardens supply a sufficient number of gooseberries and currants, these dwarf-trees may be apples, pears, cherries, and plums; but gooseberries and currants may be substituted for these, if those grown in the front garden are not considered sufficient. In order to insure good crops, the ground among the dwarf fruit-trees should not be cropped with vegetables, but only occasionally manured on the surface, and forked over to the depth of a few inches.

The trees against the walls, on the supposition that the direction of the gardens is east and west, may be peaches and nectarines on the south aspect, plums and cherries on that facing the north, and apricots on the end wall; but, if the garden should lie in the direction of north and south, the peaches, nectarines, and apricots may be planted against the side-walls, and figs and vines against the end-wall that faces the south; or morello or other cherries or plums, if it faces the north. The edgings to the walks of the back garden we have supposed to be box; but strawberries might be substituted, more especially if the walks were formed of flagstone.