The Garden Under Glass

254 THE GARDEN UNDER GLASS The Artistic Arrangement of Plants It is one thing to grow plants well and quite another to arrange them to good effect. Unfortunately, the two qualities are seldom found together in high excellence. The only explanations I can offer of this is that good culture requires that the cultivator be sullen, doggecl, determined, while in the display of plants it is impulse and imagination which betoken success. But this thought should not deter anyone from endeavouring to arrange his plants in at any rate a pleasing manner. Now to give advice in this respect it becomes necessary to deal in generalities, and while propounding principles it must clearly be left to the intelligence of the reader to apply them. Into the flowering house, of course, all the plants may in turn be brought as they become attractive, and while they cannot fail to give pleasure there is the strictly utilitarian aspect—viz. that while they are being displayed more space is available in the growing house for those plants which are to follow and keep up the succession. There are, of course, several different ways of arranging plants, and these are governed by the taste of the owner or decorator, and also in a considerable measure by the amount of available room, the number and quality of the plants and the structural arrangement of the conservatory. Personally, I am strongly in favour of so displaying plants that while they do not lose their character in-dividually yet they show collectively so as to exhibit all the beauty of the plants and compel admiration. When a fresh batch of plants are introduced to the conservatory they would scarcely receive any notice if they were merely dotted about promiscuously, but if they are arranged neatly and artistically in a group interspersed with suitable ferns,