Geranium Madame Salleroi—with pale green and white foliage. This is a most excellent plant for use in carpet-bedding because of its close, compact habit of growth, and its very symmetrical shape which is retained throughout the entire season without shearing or pruning.
It must be borne in mind by the amateur florist that success in carpet-bedding depends nearly as much on the care given as on the material used. In order to bring out a design sharply, it is necessary to go over the bed at least twice a week and cut away all branches that show a tendency to straggle across the boundary line of the various colors. Run your pruning shears along this line and ruthlessly cut away everything that is not where it belongs. If this is not done, your "pattern" will soon become blurred and indistinct. If any intermingling of colors "from across the line" is allowed, all sharpness of outline will be destroyed.
The plants must be clipped frequently to keep them dwarf and compact. Make it a point to keep the larger-growing kinds, such as Coleus, Pyrethrum and Centaurea, under six inches in height rather than over it. Alternatheras and Achyranthes will need very little shearing, as to top, because of their habit of low growth.
In setting these plants in the bed, be governed by the habit of each plant. Achyranthes and Alternatheras, being the smallest, should be put about four inches apart. Give the Coleus about six inches of lee-way, also the Centaurea. Allow eight inches for Madame Salleroi Geranium and Pyrethrum. These will soon meet in the row and form a solid line or mass of foliage.
So many persons have asked for designs for carpet-bedding, that I will accompany this chapter with several original with myself which have proved very satisfactory. Some of them may seem rather complicated, but when one gets down to the business of laying them out, the seeming complications will vanish.
In laying out all but the star-shaped and circular beds, it is well to depend upon a square as the basis to work from. Decide on the size of bed you propose to have, and then stake out a square as shown by the dotted lines in design No. 1, and work inside this square in filling in the details. If this is done, the work will not be a difficult one.
No. 1.
Design No. 1 will be found easy to make and admits of many pleasing combinations and modifications. Each gardener who sees fit to adopt any of these designs should study out a color-scheme of his own. Knowing the colors of the material he has to work with it will not be difficult to arrange these colors to suit individual taste. I think this will be more satisfactory than to give any arbitrary arrangement of colors, for half the pleasure of gardening consists in originating things of this kind, rather than copying what some one else has originated, or of following instructions given by others. This does not apply so much to designs for beds as it does to the colors we make use of in them.