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The best plants to use in carpet-bedding are the following: Coleus, in various shades of red, maroon, and scarlet, light and dark yellow, green and white, and varieties in which colors and shades of color are picturesquely blended. Achyranthes, low-growing plants in mixtures of red, pink, yellow and green. Alternatheras, similar to Achyranthes in habit, but with red as a predominating color.
Some persons are under the impression that flowering plants can be used to good effect in carpet-bedding. This is not the case, however. In order to bring out a pattern or design fully and clearly, it is absolutely necessary that we make use of plants which are capable of giving a solid color-effect.
Carpet-Bedding is not the most artistic phase of gardening, by any means, but it has a great attraction for many persons who admire masses of harmonious and contrasting colors more than the individual beauty of a flower.
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.
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.
If one cares to depend on foliage for color, most pleasing results can be secured by making use of the plants of which mention has been made in the chapter on Carpet-Bedding. Vines that will give satisfaction are Glechoma, green, with yellow variegation Vinca Harrisonii, also green and yellow, Moneywort, German Ivy, Tradescantia, Thunbergia, and Othonna.
The standard reached beneath the windows should at least be kept up, if it cannot be surpassed, right away through, and the German popular plan in this matter quite discarded of concentrating all the available splendour of the establishment into the supreme effort of carpet-bedding and glass balls on pedestals in front of the house, in the hope that the stranger, carefully kept in that part, and on no account allowed to wander, will infer an equal magnificence throughout the entire domain; whereas he knows very well all the time that the landscape round the corner consists of fowls and dust-bins.
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