Property News · August 8, 2016

100 years ago: Bedded-out plants have their uses


Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 10 August 1916It is scarcely possible to feel affection for bedded-out plants. They have been through no hardships; they have been coddled in frames and greenhouses, and are turned out by the thousand into prepared beds, very often in geometrical patterns which remove the last vestige of natural growth. But they have their uses, and when not mishandled by being made to imitate a mosaic or a Turkey carpet, they can give a certain beauty to a formal piece of garden. In the recent very hot weather them was a round bed of “succulents” which gave the satisfaction one always gets from seeing plants looking perfectly happy. These plump chubby rosettes (the French call them “Plantes Grasses”), in cool greys, some with metallic sheen, some almost blue, some like little deep green trees, were revelling in the roasting blaze, and looked perfectly in place.At Hampton Court the greater part of the so-called “herbaceous border” is not herbaceous at all but consists of plants which are put in afresh every spring; they are treated, however, in the more mixed way which we associate with herbaceous gardening, and there are a great variety of plants used. At Kew they are fond of beds full of one, or at most three, sorts of plants, and one of the prettiest going is composed of the common catmint, a cloud of lavender-blue. Hundreds of bees were busy in the aromatic foliage. Continue reading…

Source : theguardian.com
Read more…100 years ago: Bedded-out plants have their uses

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