^tVASXAr^ NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES S02069506 S THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN BY MRS. FRANCIS KING AUTHOR OF "PAGES FROM A GARDEN NOTEBOOK' ILLUSTRATED WITH PREFACE BY GERTRUDE JEKYLL NEW AND REVISED EDITION CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS I^EWYORK :: :: ::MCMXXIII Copyright, 1915, 1922, bt CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Published May, 1915 Reprinted October, 1915 May, 1916; April, 1917 Revised Edition Published March, 1922 Reprinted April, 1923 Printed in the United States of America &B9IIOO &7i»l3 'O 'N Ayvyen LIBRARY N. r r r^ ^'-^^r-r^e TO THE DEAR MEMORY or A RARE GARDENER A. R. K. N. C. State Coil0ge NOTE To the publishers and editors of The Garden Magazine my thanks are due for kind permission to reprint here those portions of this book which originally appeared in the columns of that peri- odical. To the Massachusetts Horticultural Soci- ety and to The Garden Club of America I am indebted for the use of passages written for those organizations. And to the several amateur gar- deners, known and unknown to me, whose writing or whose photographs grace these pages, I offer here most hearty appreciation of their friendly aid. Louisa Yeomans King. Orchard House, Ai^A, Michigan. PREFACE The wide-spread interest in gardening that is steadily growing throughout the land will have prepared a large public for the reception of such stimulating encouragement as will be found in the following pages. One thinks of a great and fertile field ready ploughed and sown, and only waiting for genial warmth and moisture to make it burst forth into life and eventual abundance. The book will come as these vivifying influences. The author's practical knowledge, keen insight, and splendid enthusiasm, her years of labor on her own land and her constant example and en- couragement of others — combine to make her one of those most fitted to direct energy, to suggest and instruct — to communicate her own thought and practise to willing learners. Many are those who love their gardens, many who know their plants, many who understand their best ways of culture. All these qualities or accom- plishments are necessary, but besides and above them all is the will or determination to do the best possible — "to garden finely" — as Bacon puts it. PREFACE Such a desire is often felt, but from lack of ex- perience it cannot be brought into effect. What is needed for the doing of the best gardening is something of an artist's training, or at any rate the possession of such a degree of aptitude — the God-given artist's gift — as with due training may make an artist; for gardening, in its best expres- sion, may well rank as one of the fine arts. But without the many years of labor needed for any hope of success in architecture, sculpture, or painting, there are certain simple rules, whose observance, carried out in horticulture, will make all the difference between a garden that is utterly commonplace and one that is full of beauty and absorbing interest. Of these one of the chief is a careful considera- tion of color arrangement. Early in her garden- ing career this fact impressed itself upon the author's mind. A study of the book reveals the method and gives a large quantity of applied example. A few such lessons put in practise will assuredly lead on to independent effort; for the learner, diligently reading and carefully following the good guidance, will soon find the way open to a whole new field of beauty and delight. Gertrude Jekyll. PREFACE TO NEW EDITION Such success of this book as seems to call for a second edition is most surely due to two things: to its sponsor, Miss Jekyll, through her kind preface, and to the ever-growing interest in gardening in America. That this interest is many times greater now than seven years ago, when "The Well-Considered Garden" was published, is evi- dent to all who watch these things. Seedsmen and nurserymen have difficulty in meeting the de- mands for their wares. Periodicals dealing with gardens find steady growth in distribution. Books on gardening have an immense vogue. Garden talk is heard on every hand. Organizations con- cerned with gardening, special plant societies — all, by their intense activity, bear witness to the spread of this fascinating pursuit in our time. But many there are who have no gardens yet. Let these heed this warm exhortation from the charming writer of *'The Garden of Experience,'* Mrs. Cran: zi PREFACE TO NEW EDITION "Having suffered the extreme of desire, I feel therefore the most real sympathy with all who would have and have not a garden. To them I speak. To them I say — get one. Make a way to the heart's need." Louisa Yeomans King. Orchard House, Alma, Michigan. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Color Harmony 1 II. Companion Crops 25 III. Succession Crops 39 IV. Joys and Sorrows of a Trial Garden . 51 V. Balance in the Flower Garden ... 63 VI. Color Harmonies in the Spring Garden . 75 VII. The Crocus and Other Early Bulbs . . 89 VIII. Color Arrangements for Darwin Tulips AND Other Spring-Flowering Bulbs . 101 IX. Notes on Spring Flowers 115 X. A Small Spring Flower Border . . . 129 XI. Notes on Some of the Newer Gladioli . 143 XII. Midsummer Pomps 157 XIII. Garden Notes in 1921 179 XrV. The Garden at Orchard House . . . 219 by s. w. hendrie Index 227 ILLUSTRATIONS Sea Lavender and Delphinium in a Nantucket Garden Frontispiece rACINO PAOB Tulip Kaufmanniana with Scilla Sibirica 16 Tuh'ps Reverend H. Ewbank and Clara Butt, below Blooming Lilac 16 Sea-holly and Phlox Pantheon 22 Phlox Aurore Boreale, Sea-holly, and Chrysanthemum Maxi- mum 22 Muscari Heavenly Blue, Tulipa Retroflexa, and Myosotis along Brick Walk 28 Arabis and Tulip Cottage Maid 28 Double Gypsophila and Shasta Daisy 28 Gypsophila and Lilies in the Garden 32 The Time of Lilies and Delphiniums 36 Borders of Pale Blue, Blue-Purple, and Pale Yellow ... 42 Tulip Cottage Maid with Arabis Alpina 42 Munstead Primrose and Tulip White Swan on Slope below Poplar and Pine 46 Peonies and Canterbury Bells 48 Discreet Use of Rambler Rose, Lady Gay 48 ;XV, ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE Heuchera Sanguinea Hybrids 56 Rambler Rose Lady Gay over Gate 56 Hybrid Columbines below Briar Rose Lady Penzance . . 60 Narcissus Barri Flora Wilson 60 The Time of Gypsophila 68 Hardy Asters in September 72 Puschkinia below Shrubs 80 Tulip Kaufmanniana in Border 80 Tulip Viridiflora Prsecox 86 Hyacinthus Lineatus, Var. Azureus 98 Tulip Kaufmanniana 98 Tulip Safrano (Brimstone) and Myosotis below Young Lilacs 104 Pink Canterbury Bells, Stachys Lanata 110 Bellis Perennis and Narcissus Poeticus 110 Darwin Tulips with Iris Germanica 122 A Spring Flower Border in Pale Blue, Yellow, and Mauve . 132 Gladiolus America below Buddleia 150 Delphmimn La France, Campanula Persicifolia, Digitalis Am- bigua, and Pyrethrum 160 Delphiniums the Alake and Statuaire Rude . . , . . 164 Buddleia Variabilis Magnifica, White Zinnia below . . .172 Planting Plans for Color End of Volume Color Arrangement of Late Tulips Suggestion for Sprmg Planting before Shrubbery Parterre of Spring Flowers (City) Section of Simple Planting against Brick Wall xvi COLOR HARMONY "The simple magic of color for its own sake can never be displaced, yet a garden in the highest sense means more than this."— E. V. B. COLOR HARMONY THE broadest consideration of color in gar- dening would turn our minds to the gen- eral color effect of a garden in relation to its large setting of country. Was it not Ruskin who, in spite of his rages at the average mid-Victorian garden, said that gardens as well as houses should be of a general color to harmonize with the sur- rounding country — certain tones for the simple blue country of England, others for the colder gray country of Italy ? Never was sounder color advice given than that contained in the following lines from one of the Oxford Lectures: "Bluish purple is the only flower color which nature ever used in masses of distant effect; this, however, she does in the case of most heathers — with the rhododendron {ferrugineum) , and less extensively with the colder color of the wood hyacinth; ac- cordingly, the large rhododendron may be used to almost any extent in masses; the pale varieties of the rose more sparingly, and on the turf the 3 HWfERTT UWMltr n. C. suite CMtt^ THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN wild violet and the pansy should be sown by chance, so that they may grow in undulations of color, and should be relieved by a few prim- roses." There never was so rich a time as the present for the great quantity of material available for use in the study of garden color. The range of tones in flowers to-day is almost measureless. Never be- fore were seen pinks of such richness, such deep velvetlike violets, delicate buffs and salmons, actual blues, vivid orange tones, pale beautiful lavenders. Through the magic of the hybridizers we are to-day without excuse for ugliness in the garden. The horticultural palette is furnished forth indeed. Take perennial phloxes alone: for rich violet-purple we have Lord Rayleigh; for the redder purple. Von Hochberg; for the laven- ders which should be used with these, E. Dan- zanvilliers and Antonin Mercie; for whites, the wondrous von Lassburg and the low but effec- tive Tapis Blanc; w^hile in the list of vivid or delicate pinks not one of these is unworthy of a place in the finest gardens: T. A. Strohlein, Gruppen, Konigin, General von Heutz, Selma, Bridesmaid, General Chanzy, Jules Cambon, and Elizabeth Campbell (already an established favor- 4 COLOR HARMONY ite in England and now offered in America) ; Ellen Willmott, too, a pale-gray phlox, should be im- mensely useful. I have to confess to a faint prejudice against stripes, flakes, or eyes in phloxes, principally be- cause, as a rule, the best effects in color group- ings are obtained by the use of flowers of clear, solid tones — otherwise one cannot count upon the result of one's planning. With the eye, an unex- pected element enters into our composition. Among irises what a possible range of color pictures in lavenders, blues, bronzes, yellows, springs up to the mind's eye with the very men- tion of the flower's musical name! The immense choice of species and varieties, the difference in form and height, and more notably the unending number of their lovely hues, make the iris family a true treasure-house for the good flower gardener. The first-comer of our spring iris festival is the shy, stiff Iris reticulata of four inches; the last of the lovely guests is the great white English iris of four feet; and those showing themselves be- tween the opening and closing days of iris time are of many nations — German, Japanese, Siberian, English, Dutch. Tulips, so highly developed in our day, present 5 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN a wonderful field of color from which to choose; so does the dahlia tribe. It is easy to see that the glaring faults in color planting in our gardens are not due to lack of good material. The question of absolute color is a very nice question indeed, and reminds one of the old prov- erb of one man's meat being another man's poison. We cannot say that a given color is ugly. Its beauty or lack of beauty depends upon its rela- tion to other colors. To announce that one dis- likes mauve is not to prove mauve unbeautiful. Most of us who have prejudices against a certain color would be amazed at the effect upon our color sense of the offensive hue when judiciously used with correlated tones. For instance, what com- moner than to hear this exclamation as one wan- ders in an August garden where a clump of tall phloxes have reverted to the magenta, despised of most of us, and where the hostess's shears have been spared, to the spoiling of the garden: "What a horrible color has that phlox taken on!" But take that same group of flowering stems another year, back it by the pale spires of Physostegia Virginica rosea, see that the phlox Lord Rayleigh blooms beside it, that a good lavender like Antonin Mercie is hard by, let some masses of rich purple 6 COLOR HARMONY petunia have their will below, with perhaps the flat panicles of large-flowered white verbena, a few spikes of the gladiolus Baron Hulot, and some trusses of a pinkish-lavender heliotrope judiciously disposed, and lo ! the ugliness of the magenta phlox has been transmuted into a positive beauty and become an active agent toward the loveliness of the whole picture. What a lucky thing for us delvers into plant and seed lists if the color tests of railways — on a more elaborate and delicate scale, to be sure — could be applied to the eyes of the writers of color descriptions for these publications! The only available guide to the absolute color of flowers of which I happen to know is the "Repertoire de Couleurs," published by the Chrysanthemum Society of France. Of this there is soon to be published a pocket edition; and the American Gladiolus Society has a somewhat similar proj- ect under consideration. Here we have in the French publication a criterion, a standard; and if this were oftener consulted the gardening world of this country would be working on a much higher plane than is the case to-day. So much for the range of color in our flower gardens, for the relative and absolute values of 7 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN flower colors; but what of the abuse of these things? May I give an instance? Not long since there came to my eye that which it is always my dehght to see, the landscape architect's plan of a fine Italian garden. For the spring adorn- ment of this garden such hyacinths and tulips were specified as at once to cause, in my mind at least, grave doubts concerning color harmonies, periods of bloom. Were certain ones early, would certain ones be late? — as, to secure a brilliantly gay effect, two or three varieties should surely flower together. For my own pleasure, I worked out a substitute set of bulbs and sent it to an au- thority on color in spring-growing things in this country, who thus wrote of the original plan: "In regard to the color combinations upon which you asked my comment, I can only say that they are a fair sample of how little most folks know about bulbs. In the bed of hyacinths. King of the Blues will prove quite too dark for the other colors; Perle Brillante or Electra would have been much better. In the two tulip combinations I can see no harmony at all. Keizerkroon, in my opinion, should never be planted with any other tulips. Its gaudiness is too harsh unless it is seen by itself. Furthermore, both Rose Luisante and 8 COLOR HARMONY White Swan will bloom just enough later not to be right when the others are in their prime." Now, what is the good of our finest gardens if they are to be thus misused and the owners' taste misdirected in this fashion? We spend our money for that which is not bread. I have a new profession to propose, a profession of specialists: it should be called that of the gar- den colorist. The office shall be distinct from that of the landscape architect, distinct indeed from those whose oflfice it already is to prescribe the plants for the garden. The garden colorist shall be qualified to plant beautifully, according to color, the best-planned gardens of our best designers. It shall be his duty, first, to possess a true color instinct; second, to have had much experience in the growing of flowers, notably in the growing of varieties in form and color; third, so to make his planting plans that there shall be successive pictures of loveliness melting into each other with successive months; and last, he must pay, if possible, a weekly visit to his gardens, for no eye but his discerning one will see in them the evil and the good. This profession will doubt- less have its first recruits from the ranks of women; at least, according to Mr. W. C. Egan, the color 9 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN sense is far oftener the attribute of women than of men. Still, there is the art of painting to refute this argument. Color as an aid to garden design is a matter ever present to my mind where a plan of high beauty has been adopted and already carried out. One occasionally sees a fine garden which, due to the execrable color arrangement, must of necessity be more interesting in winter than in summer. Sir WilHam Eden's plea for the flower- less garden comes to mind: "I have come to the conclusion that it is flowers that ruin a garden, at any rate many gardens: flowers in a cottage garden, yes, hollyhocks against a gray wall; orange lilies against a white one; white lilies against a mass of green; aubrietia and arabis and thrift to edge your walks. Del- phiniums against a yew hedge, and lavender any- where. But the delight in color, as people say, in large gardens is the offensive thing: flowers combined with shrubs and trees, the gardens of the Riviera, for instance, Cannes, and the much- praised, vulgar Monte Carlo — beds of begonias, cinerarias at the foot of a palm, the terrible crim- son rambler trailing around its trunk. J^ have never seen a garden of taste in France. Go to 10 COLOR HARMONY Italy, go to Tivoli, and then you will see what I mean by the beauty of a garden without flowers: yews, cypresses, statues, steps, fountains — sombre, dignified, restful." But when planting is right, when great groups of, say, white hydrangea, when tall rows of holly- hocks of harmonious color, when delicate gar- lands of such a marvellous rambler as Tausend- schon, low flat plantings of some fine verbena hke Beauty of Oxford or the purple Dolores — when such fine materials are used to produce an effect of balanced beauty, to heighten the loveliness of proportion and of line already lying before one in stone or brick, in turf or gravel, in well-devised treUis or beautifully groomed hedge, what an emi- nence of beauty may then be reached! The form and color of flowers, in my opinion, should be considered as seriously for the formal garden as the soil about their roots. Effects wuth tall flowers, liHes, delphiniums; with dwarf flowers, hardy candytuft, for instance; with lacelike flowers, the heucheras, the gypsophilas; with round-trussed flowers, phloxes; with massive- leaved flowers, the funkias or Crambe cordifolia ; with slender flowers, gladiolus, salpiglossis; with low spreading flowers, statice, annual phloxes; 11 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN with delicately branching flowers, the annual lark- spurs — what an endless array in the matter of form and habit ! The trouble with most of us is that we try to get in all the flowers, and also we often go so far as to insist on using all the colors too — with a result usually terrific. On the other hand, according to a capital Eng- lish writer, "the present taste is a little too timid about mixtures and contrasts of color. Few of those who advise upon the color arrangements of flowers seem to be aware that nearly all colors go well together in a garden, if only they are thor- oughly mixed up. It is the half-hearted con- trasts where only two or three colors are em- ployed, and those the wrong ones, that are really ugly. The Orientals know more about color than we do, and in their coloring they imitate the au- dacity and profusion of nature." Those who lead us in these matters will, I am sure, gradually and gently conduct us to an aus- terer taste, a wish for more simplicity of effect in our gardens — the sure path, if the narrow one, to beauty in gardening. The stream of my horticultural thought runs here a trifle narrower, and I see the charm of gardens of one color alone — these, of course, with 12 COLOR HARMONY the varying tones of such a color, and with the hberal or sparing use of white flowers. It is, I think, a daughter of Du Maurier whose English garden is one lovely riot, the summer through, of mauve, purple, cool pink, and white. I can fancy nothing more lovely if it receive the artist's touch. A garden of rich purples, brilliant blues and their paler shades, with cream and white, could be a masterpiece in the right hand. Such was, a summer or two since, the garden at Ashridge, Lord Brownlow's fine place in England, the following brief description of which was sent me by the hand that planted it: "Purple and blue beds at Ashridge (very difficult to get enough blue when tall blue delphiniums are over). Blue delphinium, blue salvia (August and September), purple clematis, single petunia, violas, purple sweet peas, salpiglossis, stocks, blue nemesia, blue branching annual delphinium, purple perennial phloxes, purple gladiolus." The past mistress of the charming art of color combination in gardening is, without doubt. Miss Jekyll, the well-known English writer; and to the practised amateur, I commend her "Colour in the Flower Garden" as the last word in truly artistic planting, and full of valuable suggestion 13 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN for one who has worked with flowers long enough to have mastered the compHcations of his soil and cHmate. Miss Jekyll's remarks on the varying concep- tions of color I must here repeat, in order to make the descriptions below as well understood as pos- sible. "I notice," she writes, on page 227 of "Wood and Garden," *'in plant lists, the most reckless and indiscriminate use of the words purple, violet, mauve, Hlac, and lavender; and, as they are all related, I think they should be used with greater caution. I should say that mauve and lilac cover the same ground. The word mauve came into use within my recollection. It is French for mallow, and the flower of the wild plant may stand as the type of what the word means. Lav- ender stands for a colder or bluer range of pale purples, with an inclination to gray; it is a useful word, because the whole color of the flower spike varies so little. Violet stands for the dark gar- den violet, and I always think of the grand color of Iris reticulata as an example of a rich violet- purple. But purple equally stands for this, and for many shades redder." In an earlier paragraph the same writer refers to the common color nomenclature of the average 14 COLOR HARMONY seed or bulb list as "slip-slop," and indeed the name is none too hard for the descriptive mis- takes in most of our own catalogues. Mrs. Sedg- wick in "The Garden Month by Month" provides a valuable color chart; so far as I know, she is the pioneer in this direction in this country. Why should not books for beginners in gardening af- ford suggestions for color harmony in planting, a juxtaposition of plants slightly out of the ordi- nary routine, orange near blue, sulphur-yellow near blue, and so on ? A well-known book for the ama- teur is Miss Shelton's "The Seasons in a Flower Garden." This httle volume shows charming taste in advice concerning flower groupings for color. I look forward to the day when a serious color standard for flowers shall be established by the appearance in America of such a publication as the "Repertoire de Couleurs" sent out by the Societe Frangaise des Chrysanthemistes. To this the makers of catalogues might turn as infallible; and on this those who plant for artistic combina- tion of color might rely. In the groupings for color effect given below there has been no absolute copying of any one's suggestions. To work out these plantings my plan has always been, first to make notes on the 15 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN same day of each week of flowers in full bloom. Then, by cutting certain blooms and holding them against others, a happy contrast or harmony of color is readily seen, and noted for trial in the following year. BLUE AND CREAM- WHITE — MARCH The earliest blooming color combination of which I can speak from experience is illustrated on the facing page. Here, backed by Mahonia, and blooming in one season as early as late March, thrives a most lovely group of blue and cream- white spring flowers. Tulipa Kaufmanniana, open- ing full always in the sun, spreads its deep creamy petals, while below these tulips a few hundred Scilla Sibirica show brilliantly blue. To the right bloodroot is white with blossoms at the same mo- ment, while behind this the creamy pointed buds of Narcissus Orange Phoenix carry along the tone of the cream-white tuHp. Narcissus Orange Phce- nix is a great favorite of mine; leader of all the double daffodils, I think it, with the exception of Narcissus poeticus, var. plenus, the gardenia nar- cissus, with its true gardenia scent and full ivory- white blooms; with me, however, this narcissus so seldom produces a flower that I have given 16 COLOR HARMONY up growing it. Where this does well, the most delicious color combinations should be possible. As for Tulipa Kaufmanniana, earhest of all tulips to bloom, it is such a treasure to the lover of spring flowers that the sharp advance in its price made within the last two or three years by the Dutch growers is bad news indeed for the gardener. A tulip of surprising beauty, this, with distinction of form, creamy petals, with a soft daffodil-yellow tone toward the centre, the out- side of the petals nearly covered with a very nice tone of rich reddish-pink. Its appearance when closed is unusually good, and its color really ex- cellent with the blue of the Scillas. BLUE AND PURPLE — APRIL A very daring experiment this was, but one which proved so interesting in rich color that it will be always repeated. It consisted of sheets of S cilia Sibirica planted near and really running into thick colonies of Crocus purpureus, var. grandijlorus. The two strong tones of color are almost those of certain modern stained glass. The briUiancy of April grass provides a fine setting for this bold planting in a shrubbery border. The little bulbs should be set very close, and the 17 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN patches of color, in the main, should be well de- fined. In fact, I prefer a large sheet of each color to several smaller groups with a resultant spotty effect. To my thinking, it is impossible to im- agine a finer early spring effect in either a small or a large place than these two bulbs in these two varieties to the exclusion of all else. The dwarf Iris reticulata — which should be better known, as no early bulb is hardier, richer in color and in scent — with its deep violet-purple flowers, planted closely in large masses, with spreading groups of Scilla near by, would produce an effect of blue and purple nearly like that above described. PINK, LAVENDER, AND CREAM- WHITE — MAY A fine effect for late May, that has rejoiced my eye for some years, is shown facing page 16. The flowers form the front of a shrubbery border composed entirely of Lemoine's lilacs in such va- rieties as Marie le Graye (white), Charles X (deep purplish-red), Madame Abel Chatenay (double, white). President Grevy (double, blue), Emile Lemoine (double, pinkish), and Azurea (light blue). While these are at their best, droop- ing sprays of bleeding-heart (dicentra) show their COLOR HARMONY rather bluish pink in groups below, with irregular clumps of a pearly lavender — a very light-gray- ish lavender — lent by Iris Germanica. A little back of the irises, their tall stems being considered, stand groups now of the fine Darwin tulip Clara Butt, now of tuhp Reverend H. Ewbank. The slightly bluish cast of Clara Butt's pink binds the dicentra and the lavender, lilac, and iris to each other, and the whole effect is deepened and almost focussed by the strong lavender of Rever- end H. Ewbank tulip, in whose petals it is quite easy to see a pinkish tone. The contrast in form and habit of growth in such a border is worth noticing. The lilacs topping everything with their candlelike trusses of flowers; the dicentra, the next tallest, horizontal Hues against the lilacs' perpendicular, as well as a foliage of extreme deli- cacy, contrasting with the bold dark-green of the lilac leaf; the tuHps again, their conventional cups of rich color clear-cut against the taller growth; and grayish clouds of iris bloom, with their spears of leaves below, these last broken here and there by touches of a loose-flung, rather tall forget-me- not, Myosotis dissitiflora — all this creates an en- semble truly satisfying from many points of view. Speaking of tulips, why is not the May-flower- 19 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN ing tulip Brimstone more grown? And what is there more lovely to behold than masses of this pale-lemon-colored double tuhp, slightly tinged with pink, with soft mounds and sprays of the earliest forget-me-not gently lifting its sprays of turquoise-blue against the delicately tinted but vigorous heads of this wonderful tulip? CARMINE, LAVENDER, CREAM-WHITE, AND ORANGE — LATE MAY On a slope toward the north a few open spaces of poor soil between small white pines are covered by the trailing stems of Rosa Wichuraiana. Up through these thorny stems, along which tiny points of green only are showing, rise in mid-May glowing blooms of the May-flowering tulip Cou- leur Cardinal, with its deep-carmine petals on the outside of which is the most glorious plumlike bloom that can exist in a flower. The exquisite true lavender of the single hyacinth Holbein, a "drift" of which starts in the midst of the car- mine-purple tulip and broadens as it seems to move down the slope, becomes itself merged in a large planting of Narcissus Orange Phoenix. This narcissus with its soft, creamy petals (both peri- anth and trumpet interspersed with a soft orange) 20 COLOR HARMONY does not, as the heading of this paragraph might suggest, fight with the color of the tuhp, which is far above it on the slope and whose purple exterior is beautifully echoed in softer tones of lavender by the hyacinth. CREAM- WHITE AND REDDISH ORANGE — JULY In early July a wealth of bloom Is In every garden, and the decision In favor of any special combination of color Is a matter of some difiiculty. A very good planting in a border, however, is so readily obtained, and proves so effective, that it shall be noticed here. Some dozen or fifteen large bushes of the common elder stand in an ir- regular, rather oblong group; below the cream- white cluster of its charming bloom are seventy- five to a hundred glowing cups of Lilium elegans, one of the most common flowers of our gardens, and one of those rare lihes which render their grower absolutely care-free ! Eighteen varieties of this fine Hly appear in one English bulb hst; many of these are rather lower in height than the one I grow, which Is L. elegans, var. fulgens. Below these lilies again, that the stems may be well hid, clear tones of orange and yellow blanket flower (galUardia) appear later In the month, car- 21 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN rying on the duration of color and In no way in- terfering with the truly glorious effect produced by the elder and lilies. While the lilies are tall, the elder rises so well above them that a beauti- ful proportion of height is obtained. An improvement on this grouping would be the planting of masses of L. elegans, var. Wallacei, among the gaillardia below the taller hlies. The nearer view of the great mass of July would then be perfect. BRIGHT ROSE, GRAY-BLUE, PALE LAVENDER, AND WHITE AUGUST In the facing cuts an arrangement of color for August bloom is set forth. The first photograph can give no adequate idea of the charming com- bination of phlox Pantheon, with its large panicles of tall rose-pink flowers, against the cloudy masses of sea-holly {Eryngium amethystinum) . While Miss Jekyll generally makes use of sea-holly in a broader way, that is as a partial means of transi- tion between different colors in a large border, I think it beautiful enough in itself to use at nearer range (and always with pink near by) in a small formal garden. Pantheon is a good phlox against it, but Fernando Cortez, that glowing brilliant SEA HOLLY AND PHLOX PANTHEON m^ mm ^^«»>#: PHLOX AURORE BOREALE, SEA HOLLY, AND CHRYSANTHEMUM MAXIMUM COLOR HARMONY pink, is better; it is the color of Coquelicot, but lacking the extra touch of yellow which makes the latter too scarlet a phlox for my garden. To the left of the sea-holly is Achillea ptarmica, and far beyond the tall pink phlox Aurore Boreale. In the lower cut phlox E. DanzanVilliers raises its lavender heads above another mass of sea-holly, a few spikes of the white phlox Fraulein G. von Lassberg appear to the left, and Chrysanthemum maximum provides a brilliant contrast in form and tone to its background of the beautiful eryn- gium. A use of verbena which does not appear in these illustrations, but which is frequently made with these groupings, is as follows: Below phlox Pantheon, or the Shasta daisy (or Chrysanthemum maximum) y whichever chances to be toward the front of the planting, clumps of that clear warm pink verbena Beauty of Oxford complete a color scheme in perfect fashion. The pink of the ver- bena is precisely that of the Pantheon phlox, and the plants are allowed to grow free of pins. Like the geranium, the verbena is a garden standby — and, unlike the geranium, it sows itself. The first indulgence in verbenas by the quarter or half hundred is apt to be a trifle costly; but THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN the initial cost is the only one, for if seed-pods are not too carefully removed, large colonies of little seedlings push through the ground the second year, and always, if one clear hue has been used, not only true to color but readily trans- plantable. frnmn Lnaunr N, C, Sfa'^ ^' '^-ge PUOPOm UBBART a. C. State Colle$6 II COMPANION CROPS "A Garden ! — ^The word is in itself a picture, and what pictures it reveals!" — E. V. B. II COMPANION CROPS TT will be as well to say at the outset that my -■- tastes are as far as possible removed from those popularly understood to be Japanese. I almost never regard a flower alone. I can ad- mire a perfect Frau Karl Druschki rose, a fine spray of Countess Spencer sweet pea, but never without thinking of the added beauty sure to be its part if a little sea-lavender were placed next the sweet pea, or if more of the delicious roses were together. Wherefore it will be seen that my mind is bent wholly on grouping or massing, and growing companion crops of flowers to that end. Mention is made only of those flower crops ac- tually in bloom at the same time in the garden illustrated. From this garden, of thirty-two beds separated by turf walks, and with two central cross-walks and an oblong pool for watering pur- poses, practically all yellow flowers have been ehm- i"nated, and all scarlet as well. The early colum- bine {Aquilcgia chrysantha) and the pale-yellow 27 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN Thermopsis Caroliniana are the only yellows now permitted, and these only to make blues or purples finer by juxtaposition. All yellow, orange, and scarlet flowers are relegated to the shrubbery bor- ders; therefore, in speaking of companion crops in this garden, it will be understood that some of the greatest glories of July, August, and Sep- tember are omitted. As far as I know, no one has ever suggested the growing of various varieties of gladiolus among the lower ornamental grasses. This, if practicable culturally, should give many delightful effects. A yellow gladiolus, such as Eldorado, among the yellow-green grasses ; the deep violet, Baron Hulot, or salmon-pinks, among the bluish-green. Stems of gladiolus must ever be concealed. This would do it gracefully and well. The two companion crops of spring flowers shown in cut are the early forget-me-not {Myo- sotis dissitiflora) , which presses close against the dark-red brick of the low post, while the Heavenly Blue grape hyacinth {Muscari botryoides, var.), a rich purplish-blue, blooms next it. Tulipa retro- flexa is seen in the foreground, and the buds of Scilla campanulata, var. Excelsior, when the pho- tograph was taken were about to open. After 28 MUSCARI HEAVENLY BLUE, TULIPA RETBOFLEXA, AND MYOSOTI8 ALONG BRICK WALK ARABIS AND TULIP COTTAGE MAID DOUBLE GYPSOPHILA AND SHASTA DAISY COMPANION CROPS one day's sun the various bulbs and the forget- me-nots made a most ravishing effect with their clear tones of blue, lavender, and lemon-yellow. I never tire of singing the praises of Tulipa retroflexa; it is among my great favorites in tulips. And this leads to the mention of that tulip, to me, the best of all for color, known under three names — Hobbema, Le Reve, and Sara Bernhardt. No other tulip has the wonderful and unique color of this. If you possess a room with walls in deli- cate creamy tones, furnished with a little old ma- hogany, and are happy enough to be able on some fine May morning to place there two or three bowls full of this tulip, you will understand my enthusiasm. The color may be described as one of those warm yet faded rose-pinks of old tapestry or other antique stuff; a color to make an artist's heart leap up. This is far from the subject, but these digressions must occasionally be excused. In small note-books — tiny calendars sent each year by a seed-house to its customers, and in which it is my habit to set down on each Sunday the names of plants in flower — I find the follow- ing were blooming on a day in May : Tulipa retro- ■fiexa, early forget-me-not, Muscari hotryoides, var. Heavenly Blue; Scilla campanulata, var. Excel- 29 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN sior; tulip Rose a Merveille, Campemelle jonquil. Narcissus Barn, var. Flora Wilson; Narcissus Poetaz, var. Louisa; TuUpa Greigi, Iris pumila, var. cyanea (a lovely variety, the blue of the sky). Phlox divaricata, var. Canadensis (the new variety of this, Laphami, is both larger and finer), so beautiful back of masses of Alyssum saxatile, or rock cress, both single and double, and Iheris Gibraltarica. On the Sunday one week earlier, there were in full bloom last spring, tulips Chrysolora, Count of Leicester (the best double in tawny yellows), Cou- leur Cardinal, Thomas Moore, Leonardo da Vinci, narcissus Queen of Spain and Flora Wilson, Louisa, poet's narcissus. Iris pumila (the common purple), and tulips Vermilion Brilliant, Queen of Holland, Clusiana, Greigi, Brunhilde, Cerise Gris de Lin (another of the faded pinks — in this case, however, so extreme that many gardeners would reject it), Gris de Lin, an enchanting if cold pink; Jaune a-platie, violas and arabis, a bank of Munstead primroses (certainly the apotheosis of the English primrose, if so imposing a word may be used for so shy a flower). The arabis appears (facing page 28) with Campernelle jonquils in the near part, the darling tulip Cottage Maid blooming brightly 30 COMPANION CROPS among the arabis and making the loveliest imag- inable spring bouquet. The single arabis I have now forsworn in favor of the new double variety, which is far more effective — like a tiny white stock without the stock's stiffness of habit — and quite as easy to grow and maintain. In the blossomy photograph, facing page 48, are found foi'.r or five companion crops of flowers, though that was a peculiar season in which this picture was made, when syringas bloomed with Canterbury bells ! Here peonies and Canterbury bells make up the bulk of bloom, some young syringa bushes showing white back of them, and sweetbrier covered with fragrant pink to the right. Sweet-wilHams and pinks may be found in the foreground with rich rose pyrethrum, the sweet-williams of a dark rose-red, in perfect har- mony with all the paler pinks near and beyond them. I may say here that, like most amateurs, I have a favorite color in flowers — the pink of Drummond phlox, Chamois Rose, or, in deeper tones, of sweet-wiUiam Sutton's Pink Beauty, or the rosy-stock-flowered larkspur. When I say that such and such a flower is of a good warm pink, it is to the tones of one or the other of these that I would refer. 31 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN On the date on which this picture of peonies was made there were to be found in bloom in my garden these: larkspur, Thermopsis Caroliniana (which I grow near groups of tall pale-blue del- phinium, and which makes a lovely color effect, adding lemon-colored spikes to the blue), sweet- williams, Canterbury bells, peonies, Aquilegia chrysantha, Achillea ptarmica, hardy campanula, pinks both annual and hardy, foxgloves, roses, annual gypsophila, common daisies. The latter are valuable for masses of early white. I cut them to the ground as soon as bloom is over, when their low leaf-clumps are quickly covered by overhanging later flowers. The midsummer flower crops are, by all odds, the greatest in variety as they are in luxuriance. Some idea of the appearance of this garden in mid-July may be had in the top cut facing, when the flowers fully open are almost all either blue or white, except toward the centre of the garden, where delicate pink tones prevail, and the fine purple hardy phlox Lord Rayleigh blooms, giving richness to the picture and forming a combina- tion of colors, blue and rich purple, which is especially to my taste. The abundance of Gypsophila paniculata, var. 32 ^^J^^l:.^ GYPSOPHILA AND ULIE8 IN THE GARDEN COMPANION CROPS eleganSy will be noted throughout the garden, and just here may be recalled that delightful and sug- gestive article by Mr. Wilhelm Miller in "The Garden Magazine" for September, 1909, advo- cating the use of flowers with delicate foliage and tiny blossoms as aids to lightness of garden ef- fects, not to mention the new varieties of such flowers mentioned in the article, Crambe orientalisy Rodgersia, and various unfamiliar spireas. There is a whiter gypsophila; there is a grayer as well. The former is the variety ^ore pleno, the latter the ordinary paniculata. They are both tremendous acquisitions to the garden, as their cloudlike masses of bloom give a wonderfully soft look to any body of flowers, besides making charming settings for flowers of larger and more distinct form, as in cut (page 28), where Shasta daisy Alaska is grown against the double gypso- phila. Lilium longiflorum is a companion crop of gypsophila, and I am much given to planting this low-growing lily below and among the gray soft- ness of the other. In bloom when the garden was a blaze of color in midsummer were these — or, pos- sibly, it is fairer to say, "Among those present": Delphinium, both the tall Belladonna and one of a lovely blue, Cantab by name, best of all lark- 33 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN spurs; Delphinium Chinensis, var. grandiflora^ in palest blues and whites; quantities of achillea, valuable but too aggressive as to roots to be alto- gether welcome in a small garden; Heuchera san- guinea, var. Rosamund; heliotrope of a deep pur- ple in the four central beds of the garden nearest the pool, in the centre of each heliotrope bed a clump of the medium tall and early perennial phlox Lord Rayleigh, warm purple (this was an experiment of my own which is most satisfactory in its result); baby rambler roses (Annchen Mueller), and climbing roses (the garden gate at the right is covered with Lady Gay). The arch between upper and lower gardens has young plants of Lady Gay also started against its sides. To continue with companion crops: perennial phlox E. Danzanvilliers, masses of palest lav- ender; Physostegia Virginica, var. alba; the lovely lavender-blue Stokesia cyanea, Scabiosa Japonica, sea-lavender (Statice incana, var. Silver Cloud), stocks in whites and deep purples, the annual phloxes Chamois Rose and Lutea — the latter so nice a tone of old-fashioned buff that it is useful as a sort of horticultural hyphen — and a charming double warm-pink poppy, nameless, which raises its fluffy head above its blue-green 34 COMPANION CROPS leaves from July till frost, and brings warmth and beauty to the garden. Time was when I preferred to see the chamo- mile, or anthemis, spread its pale-yellow masses below the blue delphinium spikes; but I now prefer whites, or better still, rich purples or pale lavenders, near, a closer harmony of color. One of the most successful plantings for bold- ness of efiFect is the one beyond the low hedge of the privet ibota; a detail is seen in cut facing page 36. This is of lemon and white hollyhocks, with thick, irregular groups of Lilium candidum upspringing before them. Sufficient room is left between the hedge and the lilies to cultivate and to trim the hedge, which is but two feet high. And when these tall pale flowers open and both the rusty growth of leaves at the base of the hollyhock stalks, and the yellowing leaves of the hly stems, are hidden by the trim dark hedge, the effect from the garden itself is surprisingly good. Numberless combina- tions of all these flowers, which bloom at the same time, suggest themselves, an infinite variety. Three plants which bloom in mid-July are the necessary and beautiful pink verbena. Beauty of Oxford, and the snapdragons in the fine new tones called pink, carmine-pink, and coral-red; also that 35 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN exquisite flower, Clarkia elegans, in the variety known as Sutton's double salmon, one of the most graceful and remarkably pretty annuals which have ever come beneath my eye. Love-in-the-mist blooms now, and the best variety. Miss Jekyll, is exceedingly pretty and valuable. A list of companion crops for August most nat- urally begins with perennial phloxes; in my case, Pantheon, used very freely; Aurore Boreale, Fer- nando Cortez (wonderful brilliant coppery pink), a very little Coquelicot, used in conjunction with sea-holly; white phloxes von Lassburg and Fiancee, zinnia in light flesh tones, the good lavender-pink physostegia {Virginica rosea), sea-holly, stocks, and dianthus of the variety Salmon Queen. There is hardly space left in which to mention the flower crops which enrich September with color. But no list of the flowers of that month should begin with the name of anything less lovely than the tall, exquisite, pale-blue Salvia patens. Called a tender perennial, I have found it entirely hardy; and the sudden blooming of a pale-blue flower spike in early autumn is as welcome as it is surprising. Second to this I place the hardy aster, or Michaelmas daisy, now to be had in many named varieties and forming, with the salvia just 36 COMPANION CROPS named, a rare combination of light colors. My hardy asters thus far have been practically two, Pulcherrima and Coombe Fishacre, two weeks later; this gives me four weeks of lavender bloom in September and October. The accommodating gladiolus, which, as every one knows, will bloom whenever one plans to have it, is a treasure now. America, which has so much lavender in its pink, is exceeding fair in combination with either of these hardy asters; and when spikes of the salvia are added to a mass of these two flowers of which I have just spoken, you have one of the loveliest imaginable companion crops of flowers. A prospective combination not yet tried but which I am counting upon this season is blue lyme grass {Elymus arenarius) with Chamois Rose Phlox Drummondii below it, and back of it gladio- lus William Falconer. The lyme grass has much blue in its leaves, and so has the gladiolus; there should be excellent harmonies of both fohage and flower. Very lately, long since the above was written, a color combination most subtle and beautiful, a September picture, has come to view: Salvia farinacca, a soft blue-lavender, with clustering spikes of palest pink stock near it, very close to S7 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN it, were the two subjects so perfectly suited to each other. Let me commend this arrangement as something rather out of the common, for I can hardly think this salvia is often met with in our gardens. And the use of a lovely but unfamiliar flower will bring with it a certain additional pleasure. 88 Ill SUCCESSION CROPS 'Give me a tree, a well, a hive, And I can save my soul alive." — "Thanksgiving," Katharine Tynan. Ill SUCCESSION CROPS EASY enough it is to plan successive flower crops for different parts of a place: but not so easy, considering the limited amount of nour- ishment in the soil and the habit of growth of various flowering plants, to cover one spot for weeks with flowers. An immense variety of treat- ment is possible and much disagreement must be beforehand conceded. Calculations for varying latitudes must be made with more than usual care; and the question of individual taste asserts itself with great insistence. A very rough and hard bank of nearly solid clay with a south exposure has for some years been planted to narcissus Emperor, Cynosure, and one or two other rather later varieties. Striking boldly along among these, while in full bloom, grows an irregular line, thickening and thinning in places, of tuHp Vermilion Brilliant, absolutely described by its name. As the flowers of these scarlet and yellow bulbs commence to fade, the 41 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN ground below them begins to green with Httle leaves of calendulas Orange King and Sulphur Queen, as well as of the fine double white poppy White Swan. These practically cover the dying bulb leaves in a few weeks and produce a succes- sion of charming bloom beginning rather early in the summer. A few zinnias do well among them, the medium tall varieties grown only from seed labelled "Flesh-color." For my purposes this zin- nia color is always the best. It generally produces flowers varying from flesh-pink to pale or faded yellow, colors which in all their range look so well with yellow or warm pink flowers that many unique and lovely combinations are obtained by their free use. Beware of the zinnia seed marked *'Rose," and of all mixtures of this seed. The seed rarely comes true to color, and its bad colors are so hideously wrong with most other flowers that they are a very real menace to the beginner in what we might call picture-gardening. Iceland poppies, thickly planted among the nar- cissi and tulips, would bring a crop of charming silken blooms well held above the foliage already on that bank, and coming between the earlier and later flower crops. The little walk of dark brick shown in the first 42 SUCCESSION CROPS illustration is bordered in very early spring by blue grape hyacinths (Muscari hotryoidcs), fol- lowed closely by the fine forget-me-not Myosotis dissitifiora in mounds and sprays. Among these are quantities of the cream-white daffodil (Narcis- sus cemuus) . Alternating with the plants of early forget-me-not are many more of Sutton's Perfec- tion and Sutton's Royal Blue, which come into bloom as the earliest fade; these grow very tall and form a foreground of perfect loveliness for the tall Tulipa retroflexa, which rises irregularly back of the small sky-blue flowers below, complet- ing a combination of cream color and light blue charmingly delicate and effective. Following the two blue and cream-white crops of flowers border- ing this walk, dark-pink phloxes bloom in early August, three successive periods of gayety being thus assured to the little pathway. A continuation of this walk, running toward a wooden gateway in a trellised screen, may boast also of three successive flower-appearances of dif- ferent kinds. Back of the brick edging bordering the gravel are planted alternating groups of myo- sotis Sutton's Royal Blue, hardy dianthus Her Majesty, and early and late hardy asters, the two mentioned in another chapter, Coombe Fish- 43 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN acre and Pulcherrima. First to enliven the bor- ders with color is the myosotis, a peculiarly pretty effect occurring in the leading up, at either end of the walk, of the irregular edge-groups of pale blue to low masses of the old-fashioned Harison's Yellow and Persian Yellow rose. Late forget-me-not is never lovelier than when used in connection with this rose. The combination reminds me of the delicate colors of the flower-boxes below each win- dow of Paquin's great establishment in the Rue de la Paix, as it may be seen every May. Fol- lowing the myosotis and yellow roses come masses of the scented white pinks, while by this time the hardy asters have developed into handsome dark- green groups of leaves and give all through the summer a rich green contrasting well with the gray mounds of dianthus foliage, and finally, in September, rising suddenly into sprays of tall, fine lavender bloom. No succession crop of spring and early summer that I have happened upon seems to work bet- ter than that of tulip Yellow Rose planted in small spaces between common and named varie- ties of Oriental Poppy. The tulip, in itself of gorgeous beauty, very rich yellow and extremely double, absolutely lacks backbone, and the first 44 SUCCESSION CROPS hca\^ shower brings its widely opened flowers to earth to be bespattered with mud. The leaves of the poppy, upright and hairy, form a capital support for the misbehaving stem of Yellow Rose, and the poppies, having thus lent the tulips aid in time of need, go a step farther and cover their drying foliage with a handsome acanthus- like screen of green surmounted by the noble scarlet and salmon blooms of early June. This is a very simple, practical, and safe experiment in succession crops, and is heartily commended. Fol- lowing these poppies comes the bloom of a few plants of campanula Die Fee, and I am trying this year the experiment of Campanula pyramidalis in blues and whites thickly planted among the pop- pies, for late summer bloom when the poppy leaves shall have vanished. This is a large de- mand to make upon the earth in a small space, but, with encouragement by means of several top- dressings of well-rotted manure, I hope to accom- plish this crop succession satisfactorily. Among the yellow columbines (Aquilegia chrysantha) I generally tuck quantities of white or purple stocks, those known as Sutton's Perfection. The aqui- legia is cut close to the ground as soon as its seed- pods take the place of flowers; and the stocks are 45 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN then beginning their long period of bloom. Can- terbury bells are usually the centres of colonies of annual asters (my great favorites are the single Aster Sinensis, in chosen colors — not to be had in every seed-list, by the way), and of groups of gladiolus bulbs so arranged as to hide the vacancy left when the Canterbury bells must be lifted from the ground after blooming. In four places in the garden where rather low- growing things are desired, are alternate groups of a handsome, dark, velvety-red sweet-william — the seed of which was given me by Miss Jekyll, who described this as the color of the sweet-wil- liam of the old Enghsh cottage garden — and well- grown plants of Stokesia cyanea. As soon as the fine heads of sweet-william begin to crisp and dry, the beautiful lavender-blue flowers of the Stokesia take up the wondrous tale, and a veil of dehcate blue is drawn over the spots which a few days since ran red with a riot of dark loveliness. Among larkspurs I plant Salvia patens, which to look tidy when blooming must be carefully staked while the stems are pliable and tender. Second crops of delphinium bloom seem to me a mistake — I believe the vitality of the plant is somewhat impaired and the color of the flowers is 46 SUCCESSION CROPS seldom as clear and fine as in the first crop. Green leaves in plenty should be left, of course: the lower part of Salvia patens is not attractive and its pale-blue flowers have added beauty rising from the fresh delphinium foliage. The plan of planting the everlasting pea {La- thyrus latifolius, var. The Pearl) among delphin- iums, to follow their bloom by clouds of white flowers, is recommended by an English authority. To continue the blue of tall delphinium, the very best succession crop is that of Delphinium Chi- nense or grandiflorum, the lower branching one with the cut leaf; a fine hardy perennial in exquisite shades of pale and deep blue, whose flowers are at their very best immediately after the spikes of their blue sisters have gone into retirement. The fine new Dropmore variety of Anchusa Italica is exceedingly good placed near the vigor- ous green spikes of the leaves of the white false dragonhead {Physostegia Virginicay var. alba) : when the latter is low, the great anchusa leaves nearly cover it; and after the crop of brilHant blue flowers is exhausted, and the robust plants are cut back, the physostegia raises its tall white spikes of bloom a few weeks later, brightening an otherwise dull spot. 47 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN Platycodons, both blue and white, are capital to dwell among and succeed Canterbury bells; the platycodons to be followed again in their turn by the later-blooming Campanula pyramidalis. Will some kind garden-lover make me his debtor by suggesting a good neighbor and successor to the hardy phlox? This has been a problem in a locality where frost is due in early September, and some of the tenderer things, such as cosmos, are really nothing but a risk. If one could raze one's phloxes to the ground once they had finished their best bloom, the case might be different. But the French growers now advise (according to interest- ing cultural instructions for phlox-growing issued by one specialist) the retention of all flower stalks during winter ! This makes necessary an im- mense amount of work in the way of cutting, to- ward early September, in order that the phloxes may keep some decent appearance as shrublike plants of green. To follow the bloom of Iris Germanica (of which I find two varieties planted together, Mrs. Hor- ace Darwin and Gloire de Hillegom, to give a charming succession crop of flowers with a change of hue as well), I have already recommended the planting of gladiolus. Lilium candidum growing 48 PEONIES AND CANTERBURY BELLS DISCREET USE OF RAMBLER ROSE. LADY GAY SUCCESSION CROPS back of iris leaves is also effective, and, by care- fully considered planting, gladiolus forms a be- tween-crop of no little value. Of succession crops to follow each other in places apart, it is hardly worth while to speak. This is an easy matter to arrange; the fading of color before one shrubbery group acting as a signal to another place to brighten. Munstead primroses (cut, page 46) are scarcely out of bloom when tulip Cottage Maid and arabis are in beauty, as in cut on page 42, in an unused spot under grapes, and these are quickly followed by rambler roses (cut, page 48), peonies, and Canterbury bells in the garden proper (cut, page 48). Bordering on the turf edges of a walk in a kitchen garden three succession crops of flowers have been obtained by the use of these three plantings. Roses stand a foot back from the grass. Between them and the turf long, irregular masses of Tulipa Gesnerianay var. rosea, bloom rich rose-red in May. The roses follow in June; and Beauty of Oxford verbena covers the dying tulip leaves with clusters of wonderful pink bloom which lasts well into the autumn. I have sometimes thought that a white garden would be a simple matter to arrange, and that, under certain very green and fresh conditions and 49 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN with plenty of rich shadow to give its tones va- riety, it should not be monotonous. The procession of white flowers is so remarkable, beginning, say, with the snowdrop, bloodroot, sweet white violet, and the arabis in its single and double forms, followed quickly by Iberis Gibraltarica and Phlox subulata, white violas — all these for the low early flowers — and followed by larger, taller, and more mas- sive blooms, from peonies on to Canterbury bells, thence to lihes, white hollyhocks, gypsophilas. Pearl achillea, and white phloxes. Dozens of flower names occur at the mere thought. It seems as though every flower must have its white repre- sentative. Whether an all-white garden would be truly agreeable or no, I cannot say, but I do hold that sufficient white is not used in our gar- dens — that a certain brilliancy in sunHght is lost by the absence of masses of white flowers, succes- sion crops of which it is so easy to obtain and maintain. With the free use of white flowers, there is sure to be a fresh proclamation of beauty, too, at twilight and under the moon — arguments which must appeal to the amateur gardener of poetic taste. 50 IV JOYS AND SORROWS OF A TRIAL GARDEN 'Here is a daffodil, Six-winged as seraphs are; They took her from a Spanish hill. Wild as a wind-blown star. When she was born The angels came And showed her how her petals should be worn. Now she is tame — She hath a Latin name." — "A London Flower Show," Evelyn Underhill. IV JOYS AND SORROWS OF A TRIAL GARDEN THE three indispensable adjuncts of a good flower garden, when considering its upkeep, are, in the order of their importance: a tool-house well stocked, a good supply of compost, and space for a trial garden. In planting for color effect the trial garden is a necessity. The space for it may be small: no matter; plant in it one of a kind. The gardener happy in the possession of the visualizing sense may take the one plant and in his or her imagination readily see its effect as disposed in rows, groups, or large masses. My own trial garden space is very small; and my idea has been from the first to secure plants for it in multiples of four, if possible according to size. The formal flower garden happens to be arranged alike in all four quarters of its plan, and this habit of balanced planting makes the trying out of eight or sixteen of a kind a really econom- 53 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN ical thing in the end. If the plants please, and the colors form an agreeable combination with others already in the garden, their removal in the autumn from trial-garden rows to certain spots in the garden proper is simple. A portion of the trial garden is kept for seed, and the balance for small collections of bulbs or plants; except so much space as is reserved for the fours, eights, and sixteens mentioned above. Of Crambe cordifolia, for example, I should never plant more than four, owing to its great size and spreading habit of growth, while of a dwarf hardy phlox eight should be the least. It occurs to me often that some of us underestimate the enormous value of this wonderful plant. Sure to bloom as is the sun to rise and set, varying in its height as few other flowers do, with a range of wonderful color unsurpassed, perhaps unrivalled, by any hardy flower, the gardener's consolation in a hot, dry August, when it maketh the wilderness of the midsummer formal garden to blossom as the rose — there is a delightful combination of certainty and beauty about it which cannot be overpraised. Forbes, the great Scotch grower, in his last list gives six pages of fine type to this flower. It is like a clock in its day of bloom, another great 54 A TRIAL GARDEN point in its favor. I have, for instance, three varieties of white which follow each other as the celebrated sheep over the wall, each brightening as the other goes to seed. No lovelier thing could be conceived than a garden of phloxes, a perfect garden of hardy phloxes; in fact, an interesting experiment if one had time and space for it would be a garden made up entirely of varieties of phlox; beginning with the lovely colors now obtainable in the P. suhulata group, next the fine lavenders of P. divaricata, then an interim of good green foliage till Miss Lingard of the P. decussata sec- tion made its appearance, to be followed by the full orchestra of the general group of violets and purples (basses); mauves, lavenders, and pinks (violas, 'cellos, and brasses); and the range of whites (flutes and violins). At the close of this concert of phlox-color the audience must leave the garden. The pity is that August is its last hour. The strains of glorious music, however, follow one over the winter snows. But this ramble has carried me far afield. To return to the trial garden — heucheras in the fol- lowing varieties were admitted to this place last fall: brizoides, gracillima, Richardsoni, splendens, Pluie de Feu, and Lucifer. They flourished su- 55 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN perbly, although their little roots had been sub- jected to the test of a two weeks' journey by sea and land from an English nursery to Michigan. The flower spikes of these hybrid heucheras were thirty-two inches high by actual measurement ! Another year, when well established, they should send up even longer spikes. Their colors vary from very rich coral-red to pale salmon, but in- variably on the right side of pink — the yellow rather than the blue. This encourages me to think of them in connection with sweet-william Sutton's Pink Beauty (Newport pink). Next year I hope to see the heucheras' tall delicate sprays emerging from the flat lower masses of the others' bloom, since they flower simultaneously. Long after the sweet-william has gone to its grave upon the dust heap, however, the heu- cheras continue to wave their lacelike pennants of bright color. I hardly know of any plant which has so long a period of bloom. The only heu- cheras familiar to me before were the common species H. sanguinea and the much-vaunted va- riety Rosamunde. While these are very beauti- ful, they have not with me the height nor the generally robust appearance necessary for full ef- fect in mass planting. The leaves of H. Richard- 56 HEUCHERA SANGUINEA HYBRIDS RAMBLER ROSE LADY GAY OVER GATE A TRIAL GARDEN soni (which are, as Miss Jekyll points out, at their best in spring, with the bronze-red color) make a capital ground cover below certain daffo- dils and tulips, and contrast well with foliage of other tones which may neighbor them in the late summer. These heucheras are not common enough in our gardens or in simple borders. Their bril- liant appearance joined to the long flowering period makes them garden plants of rare quality. Let me suggest placing one of the brighter varie- ties before a good group of white Canterbury bells with the same pink sweet-william already mentioned near by. By "near by" I mean really close by, no interfering spaces of earth to injure the effect. I am unalterably opposed to garden- ing in the thin, sparse fashion which some gardeners affect, and never let an inch of soil appear. Let the earth be never so good nor so carefully weeded and cultivated, it is only now and again that an edge of turf should be seen, "in my foolish opin- ion," as the Reverend Joseph Jacob's old gardener is apt to remark to his master, the delightful writer on flowers. Sixteen peonies with grand French names graced my trial garden this year, standing demurely equidistant from each other in a stiff row. Their 57 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN bloom was feeble, small, and hardly worth noting for this first season; next year they should be subjects for observation. It was a disappoint- ment that Baroness Schroeder refused to show a single flower this spring. For lo, these many years have I looked at prices and longed to pos- sess this glorious peony; and, now that she is within my gates, to find her refusing to speak to me must be set down as one of the sorrows of this trial garden. But the daffodils ! Early in the spring those wonderful varieties suggested by Reverend Joseph Jacob in the columns of "The Garden" as repre- sentative of the various classes — those far ex- ceeded and outshone all anticipation. Mr. Jacob's hst will be interesting to lovers of the narcissus in this country. I subjoin it: Yellow Trumpets: Emperor, Glory of Leiden, Maximus, Golden Bell, P. R. Barr, Queen of Spain (Johnstoni). White Trumpets: Madame de Graaff. Bicolor Trumpets: Apricot, Empress, J. B. M. Camm, Victoria, Mrs. W. T. Ware. Cups with Yellow Perianths: Albatross, Lucifer, Citron, Duchess of Westminster, White Lady, Ariadne, Lulworth, Dorothy Wemyss, M. M. de 58 A TRIAL GARDEN Graaff, Minnie Hume, Artemis, Waterwitch, Crown Prince, and Flora Wilson. Pheasant Eyes: Ornatus, Homer, Horace, Cas- sandra, Recurvus, Eyebright, and Comus. Doubles: Argent, Orange Phoenix, Golden Phoenix. Bunch-flowered: Elvira (Poetaz), Campernelle jonquils {rugulosus variety). Of each of these I planted two a year ago. Fifty varieties set some four inches apart gave three good rows of daffodils, and of these but four or five were already familiar. The first to really attract and enthrall me was Eyebright. It draws as a star at night. Its rarely brilliant color and distinct form make it one of the greatest joys afforded by the trial garden. Next came the wonderful Argent, a fine star-shaped flower, half-double, pale yellow and cream-white. Then, in order, Barri conspicuus was a very fine daffodil — yellow perianth, with cup of brilhant orange- scarlet. Then Mrs. Walter T. Ware, one of the best of the lot in every way. Gloria Mundi is a very beautiful flower, yellow perianth with a bright cup of orange-scarlet. Sir Watkin, a huge daffodil, and effective, is entirely yellow. Minnie Hume, a pale flower full of charm. Artemis, a beauty, small but of compact form. Eyebright 59 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN and Firebrand were the brightest and most glow- ing of the fifty. Elvira, of the Poetaz group, is a telling flower with its rich cream-white bunches of bloom and pale cup of straw-color. This daf- fodil, grown in masses in woodlands, should pro- duce a very marvellous spring picture. I have fancied, too, that its fine flowers above the low Iris pumila, var. cyanea, might be a sight worth seeing. These fragmentary notes are all that can be given here. It is hard to choose from so many perfect flowers a few which seem more remark- able than the rest. My practice was, as these daffodils came toward flowering, to cut one from each bulb while hardly out of the bud, label it with a bit of paper high up on the stem, and keep it before me in water for observation and comparison. They were unmitigated *'joys" — as daffodils always are. What a marvel to have a few garden things such as tulips, daffodils, and phlox, subject to no insect pests, living through the severe winters of our climate, and in such va- riety as to amaze those who like myself are only beginning to know what has been done by hy- bridizers ! Among the joys of the summer in the trial 60 HYBRID COLUMBINES BELOW BRLVR ROSE LADY PENZANCE NARCISSUS BARRI FLORA WILSON A TRIAL GARDEN spaces was Clematis recta. So satisfactory was it here that I count on using it freely in the main garden. It grew to a height of perhaps two feet, with loose clusters of white bloom much like those of the climbing C. paniculata, held well above a pretty and shrublike plant whose delicately cut foliage is of a remarkably fine tone of dark bluish- green. The green holds its own well in hot, dry weather, and gives it value as a low background after its bloom has gone. Perennial phloxes receive some attention in this trial garden. Of these, one new to me, An- tonin Mercie, shall have special mention, first be- cause of its good color, a light lilac-lavender; next because of its rather early bloom — August 5 or thereabouts in 43° N. latitude; and last because of its rather low and very branching habit. The spread of its good green leaves and full flower trusses makes it an unusually good phlox for the formal garden, and its resemblance in color to E. Danzanvilliers, the taller and more pearly lavender phlox, fits it admirably for use before the latter. If Lord Rayleigh were just a Httle later, what a delicious combination of lavenders and violet could be arranged ! Phlox R. P. Struth- ers, a brilHant dark pink, redder than Pantheon, 61 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN not so red as Coquelicot, more perhaps on the order of the fine Fernando Cortez than any phlox with which I can compare it, is another immense acquisition. This is also early, with a much larger truss of bloom than Fernando Cortez. Standing below groups of sea-holly {Eryngium amethystinum) great masses of this would prove most telling. Of many other experiments and tryings-out should I like to write here: of Mr. Walsh's fine rambler roses, notably Excelsa, which is in a fair way to equal the popularity of Lady Gay; of some new larkspurs, a small collection of colum- bines, and another of hardy asters. I will only add a word concerning the one sorrow of a trial garden which has no cure. It is the loss of what the good old Englishman without whom I should be helpless is pleased to call "lay bells." When a "lay bell" is gone, then is the garden world up- side down ! All my bearings are lost ; and I hate the anonymous inhabitant, the creature without identity, who has the effrontery to stand up and bloom as though he were perfectly at home where those who see him know him not ! BALANCE IN THE FLOWER GARDEN A sun-dial is calm time, old time, beautiful spacious time in a garden; it is slow waltz time, — time that flows like a shining twist of honey, sweet and slow. A sun-dial prods nobody, a sun-dial can trance and forget; it lets the green hours glide. And at the close of day, when Evening leans upon the garden gate, your sun-dial ceases to suppose it knows the hour. — "The Villa for Coelebs," J. H. Yoxall. BALANCE IN THE FLOWER GARDEN WHEN the chance to arrange the planting of a formal garden of my own fell into my hands, about eight years ago, I felt strongly the need of advice in what I was about to do. Ad- vice, however, was not forthcoming, and at the outset I fell, of course, into the pit of absurdity. Without any reason for so doing, I decided to arrange the planting in this garden (a balanced de- sign in four equal parts with eight beds in each section) as though the whole were a scrap of per- ennial border a few feet wide and a few feet long. The ridiculous idea occurred to me to have the garden a picture to be looked at from the house alone. The matter of garden design was to fade out of sight except with regard to the few beds immediately surrounding the small central pool. These were planted more or less formally, with heliotrope in the four parallelograms nearest the 65 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN centre, and iris and lilies in four other spaces near the rest. I endeavored to produce irregular cross- wise banks of color from the far end of the garden to the part nearest the house — scarlet, orange, and yellow, with a fair sprinkling of hollyhocks in yel- low and white on the more distant edge; before these, crowds of white flowers, gray-leaved plants and blue-flowering things; and, nearest of all to the beholder, brighter and paler pinks. The result was nothing but an ugly muddle — indescribably so when one happened to be in the midst of the garden itself. For two or three years I bore with this unhappy condition of things; in- deed, nothing but the fact that the flowers con- ducted themselves in remarkably luxuriant and brilliant fashion, due to the freshness and richness of the soil, could have saved me from seeing sooner the silly mistake I had made; when, chancing to look down upon the garden from an upper win- dow, the real state of things suddenly revealed itself, and from that day I set about to plan and plant in totally different fashion. With Mr. Robinson, I feel against the wretched carpet-bedding system, while I quite agree, on the clher hand, with the spokesman for the formalists, Reginald Blomfield, who declared that there is no 66 BALANCE IN THE GARDEN such thing as the "wild garden," that the name is a contradiction of terms. The one thing I do maintain is that advice, the very best advice, is the prime necessity: for those who can afford it, the fine landscape architect; for those who can- not, the criticism or counsel of some friend or ac- quaintance whose experience has been wider than their own. The time is sure to come when experts in the art of proper flower-grouping alone will be in demand. There is no doubt about it, our grandmothers were right when they preferred to see a vase on each side of the clock ! With a given length of shelf and a central object on that shelf, one's in- stinct for equahzing calls for a second candlestick or bowl to balance the first. My meaning may be illustrated by a recent picture in "The Cen- tury Magazine" of Mrs. Tyson's beautiful garden at Berwick, Maine. Charming as is this lovely garden-vista, with its delightful posts in the fore- ground, repeating the lines of slim poplar in the middle distance, it would have given me much more pleasure could those heavy-headed white or pale-colored phloxes on the right have had a per- fect repetition of their effective masses exactly opposite — directly across the grass walk. These 67 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN phloxes cry aloud for balance, placed as they seem to be in a distinctly formal setting. So it is in the formal flower garden. I have come to see quite plainly, through several years of lost time, that balanced planting throughout is the only planting for a garden that has any design worth the name. It is difficult to con- ceive of that formal garden in which the use of formal or clipped trees would be inappropriate; and these we must not fail to mention, not only because of the fine foil in color and rich back- ground of dark tone which they bring into the gar- den, but because of their shadow masses as well and their value as accents. And that word "accents" brings me to the consideration of the first impor- tant placing of flowers in a garden which hke my own is, unlike all Gaul, divided into four parts. Two cross-walks intersect my garden, causing four entrances. To flank each of these entrances, it can be at once seen, balanced planting must prevail. In the eight beds whose corners occur at these entrances, this planting is used: large masses of Thermopsis Caroliniana give an early and brightly conspicuous bloom. Around these the tall salmon-pink phlox, Aurore Boreale, much later; below this — filling out the angle of the 68 BALANCE IN THE GARDEN corner to the very point — the blue lyme grass {Elymus arenarius), gladiohis WilHam Falconer, and lowest, of all, Phlox Drmnmondii, var. Chamois Rose. None of these colors fight with each other at any time, and the large group of tall-growing things is well fronted by the intermediate heights of the lyme grass and the gladiolus when in growth or in bloom. The four far corners of my garden I also consider more effective when planted with tall-growing flowers; in these the Dropmore, An- chusa Italictty first shines bluely forth; this soon gives place to the white physostegia, with phlox Fernando Cortez blooming below the slim white spikes just mentioned; and last, to fight up the corners, comes the mauve Physostegia Virginica, var. rosea, whose bloom here is far more profuse and effective than that of its white sisters. This grouping gives almost continuous bloom and very telling color from mid- June to mid-September; the periods of green, when they occur, are short, and the vigorous-looking plants are not at all objectionable before they blossom. The effect of balanced planting in these corners I consider good. The eye is carried expectantly from one angle to another and expectation is fulfilled. In the centre of this garden are four rectangular 69 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN beds, corresponding in proportion to the size of the rectangular pool. These, as forming part of the centre of the garden, are always planted ex- actly alike. Purple of a rich bluish cast is one of the colors which bind instead of separate, and purple it is which here becomes an excellent focal color for the garden. In the middle of each bed is a sturdy group of the hardy phlox Lord Ray- leigh, surrounded on all sides by heliotrope of the darkest purple obtainable. This year, however, I expect to replace the heliotrope with even bet- ter effect by a tall blue ageratum, which I saw in one or two Connecticut gardens, as the paler color is more telling and quite as neutral for such a position. Speaking of this ageratum, I may per- haps digress for a moment to mention a charming / effect I saw on an out-of-door dining-table last summer, obtained by the use of this flower. The color of the table was a pale cool green and most of its top was exposed; in the centre stood a bowl of French or Italian pottery, bearing a care- less gay decoration, and at the four corners smaller bowls. These were filled, to quote the words of the knowing lady whose happy arrangement this was, *'with zinnias which had yellows and copper- reds, with the variety which resulted from an order 70 BALANCE IN THE GARDEN of salmon-pinks and whites. We really had almost everything but salmon-pink." The zinnias, I who saw them can aflSrm, made a most brilliant mass of color not altogether har- monious; but all was set right by the introduc- tion, sparingly managed, of the lovely ageratum, Dwarf Imperial Blue. The eye of her who ar- ranged these flowers saw that a balm was needed in Gilead; the ageratum certainly brought the zinnia colors into harmony as nothing else could have done, and a charmingly gay and original decoration was the result. What a suggestion here, too, for the planting of a little garden of annuals ! We are apt to think of balance in the formal garden as obtained for the most part by the use of accents in the shape of formal trees, or by some architectural adjunct. I believe that color masses and plant forms should correspond as ab- solutely as the more severe features of such a garden. For example, in practically the same spot in all four quarters of my garden there are, for perhaps four to six weeks, similar masses of tall white hardy phloxes, the blooming period beginning with von Lassburg and closing wiLli Jeanne d'Arc, the white repeated in the dwiirf 71 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN phlox Tapis Blanc in four places nearer the centre of the garden. For accents in flowers, the mind flies naturally to the use, first, of the taller and more formal types of flowers. Delphiniums with their fine up- rightness and glorious blues; hollyhocks where space is abundant and rust doth not corrupt; the magnificent mulleins, notably Verhascum Olympi- cum, might surely emphasize points in design; and I read but now of a new pink one of fine color, which, though mentioned as a novelty in Miss Ellen Willmott's famous garden at Warley, Eng- land, will be sure to cross the water soon if in- vited by our enterprising nurserymen. Lilies of the cup-upholding kinds, standard roses, standard wistarias, standard heliotropes are all to be had. The use of the dwarf or pyramidal fruit-tree in the formal garden is very beautiful to me, recall- ing some of the earliest of the fine gardens of England, and (where the little tree is kept well trimmed) offering a rarely interesting medium for obtaining balanced effects. But the tall plants are not the only available means for producing balanced effects. Lower masses of foliage or fiowers have their place. They must be masses, however, unmistakable 72 HARDY ASTERS IN SEPTEMBER BALANCE IN THE GARDEN masses. Thus, in the illustration facing page 68, each of the large flower masses of baby's breath {Gypsophila elegans) — consisting of the bloom of but a single well-developed plant — is repeated in every instance in four corresponding positions in this garden. There was too much gypsophila in bloom at once when this picture was made, but because some was double the effect was not as monotonous as the photograph would make out. In a fine garden in Saginaw, Michigan, designed and planted by Mr. Charles A. Piatt, balance is preserved and emphasized in striking fashion by the use of the plantain hly {Funhia Sieboldiiy or grandiflora), with its shining yellow-green leaves. Masses of this formal plant are here used as an effective foreground for a single fine specimen bush, not very tall, of Japan snowball {Viburnum plicatum). The poker flower {Tritoma Pfitzeri) is also used in this garden to carry the eye from point to corresponding point; and speaking of tritoma, which Mr. Piatt in this garden associates with iris, let me mention again that delightful ageratum, as I lately saw it, used below tritoma. The tritoma must have been one of the newer varieties, of an unusual tone of intense salmony- orange, and while the ageratum would seem too 73 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN insignificant in height to neighbor the tall spike above it, the u^e of the lavender-blue in large masses added enormously to the effect of the torches. In the second illustration, the rather thin-look- ing elms seem to flank the garden entrance rather fortunately. A certain pleasurable sensation is felt in the balance afforded by the doubly bor- dered walk with its blue and lavender Michael- mas daisies or hardy asters. It is surely the repe- tition of the twos which has something to do with this: two borders, two posts, two trees, the eye carried twice upward by higher and yet higher objects. 7'i VI COLOR HARMONIES IN THE SPRING GARDEN 'O Spring, I know thee ! Seek for sweet surprise In the young children's eyes. But I have learnt the years, and know the yet Leaf-folded violet. In these young days you meditate your part; I have it all by heart." — "In Early Spring," Alice Meyneli.. VI COLOR HARMONIES IN THE SPRING GARDEN TN these words. Spring Flowers, there is very -■- music. There is a delicious harraony in all of Nature's colors, and particularly in the colors of all native spring flowers, as they appear with each other in their own environment. If any one doubts what I say, let him look at such pictures as are found in Flem well's ''Flowers of the Alpine Valleys"; let him take up Mrs. Allingham's "Happy England"; or let him in May wander in the nearest woodlot and see a lovely tapestry of pale color woven of the pink of spring beauties, the delicate lavenders of hepatica, and the faint yellow of the dogtooth violet — thousands of tiny blooms crowding each other for space, but all very good. Perhaps, next to the snowdrop, crocus is the earliest of the cultivated bulbs to bloom in our wintry region. The matter of color mixtures here comes to the fore. I admit this to be a question 77 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN of personal taste; but it is one on which discus- sion should be agreeable and fruitful. It happens that I object to a mixture of colors in crocus, or, for that matter, in anything. Not long ago a well-known landscape gardener, a woman, re- marked that a border of mixed Darwin tulips was one of the most successful of her many plant- ings. In such a hand, I am sure this was so. If such planting were done exactly as it should be, with sufficient boldness, a sure knowledge of what was wanted, and great variety of colors and tones of those colors, the result would surely show a tapestry again thrown along the earth — a tapes- try grander in conception and more glorious in kind than the one woven of the tiny blossoms mentioned above. But with the average gar- dener a mixture, so called, is a thing of danger. What more hopeless than a timid one ! "Be bold, be bold, but not too bold" — Spenserian advice holdspiere. To return to crocus. Awhile ago, in the bor- ders of this small Michigan place of ours, there was in one place a most lovely carpet of colonies of pale-lavender crocus Maximilian, with grape hyacinth {Muscari azureum) running in and out in peninsulas, bays, and islands. Tall white crocus 78 COLOR HARMONIES Reine Blanche, in large numbers, was near by, itg translucent petals shining in the sun beyond its more dehcately colored neighbors. I beheve I have before expatiated in these pages on the great beauty of Crocus purpurea, var. grandiflora, carpeting large spaces of bare ground beneath shrubbery, principally used in connection with great sheets of Scilla Sihirica, which blooms so very little later than the crocus as to make the two practically simultaneous. These, in order to get a telling effect, should be planted by the thousands, and this, I beg to as- sure the reader, is a less serious financial observa- tion than it sounds ! \ Hepatica that year bloomed with 7m reticu- lata. As an experiment I arranged the following spring some groups of this smart little iris, with hepatica plants threading their way among the grasslike leaves of the iris, and near by a few hundreds of Muscari azureum. The cool, delicate pinks of the hepatica were in most lovely accord with the rich violet of the iris, yet affording a striking contrast in form and a full octave apart in depth and height of tone. Is there a valid objection to thus using imported and native plants side by side.'^ I know Ruskin would have 79 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN hated it, but the great mid- Victorian man prob- ably never had a chance to see the thing well done. You recall what he wrote of English flower gardens : "A flower garden is an ugly thing, even when best managed; it is an assembly of unfortunate beings, pampered and bloated above their nat- ural size; stewed and heated into diseased growth; corrupted by evil communication into speckled and inharmonious colors; torn from the soil which they loved, and of which they were the spirit and the glory, to glare away their term of tormented life among the mixed and incongruous essences of each other, in earth that they know not, and in air that is poison to them." I should like to bring Mr. Ruskin back to life again, show him some color achievements in flower gardening in England and America to-day, and hear him say, "A new order reigneth." But back to the crocus ! Where drifts of Crocus purpureuSi var. grandiflorus, were blooming under leafless Japanese quince, blooming quite by them- selves, a fine show of color of the same order was had, really only a transition from one key to another, by flinging along the ground, planting where they fell, heavy bulbs of hyacinth Lord 80 PUSCHKINIA BELOW SHRUBS TULIP KAUFMANNLVNA IN BORDER COLOR HARMONIES Derby. The full trusses of this superb flower made the most lovely companions for the just- about-to-fade crocus. How can I adequately de- scribe the color of Lord Derby ! Never, no never, in the words of one of the Dutch growers, who calmly says, "Porcelain blue, back heavenly blue." May I venture to ask the reader what impression these words convey to him? To me they are as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. They mean nothing. From my own observation of the hya- cinth, I should say that its blue, in the early stages of development, has a certain iridescent quality which makes it uncommonly interesting, almost dazzling when seen beyond the green of the fresh grass of May; and in full bloom it shines out with a half-deep tone of purpUsh blue. Crocus purpureus, var. grandiflorus, blooms with this hya- cinth; the two tones of purple are distinct from each other and extremely interesting together. Is, or is not, Puschkinia little known.'' How distinct it is from most of the smaller spring things, and how lovely in itself with its tiny bluish- white bells, pencilled with another deeper tone of blue! And so rewarding, coming up vahantly year after year, without encouragement of the compost or replanting ! A little colony of it is 81 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN here shown (page 80) very badly because rather too tightly planted. Puschkinia could be asso- ciated with Iris reticulata most beautifully; or its slender bluish bells would be delightful growing near Tulip Kaufmanniana. The bloom of all these bulbous things may be quite confidently expected at the same time. Another planting shows practically nothing but crowds of the fine white crocus Reine Blanche, grown as naturally as possible below Pyrus Ja- ponica. Here they dwell calmly and seem to sleep year after year, except for the time when they show their shining faces to the sun of April. The most dreaded enemy of the crocus, to my mind, is a wet snow. The petals, once soaked and weighted, never recover their beautiful texture, and when, one fatal April, as my note-book shows, our hectic climate brought in one hour upon these charming but tender fiowers rain, hail, and snow, the wreckage may be left to the imagination of the tender-hearted. Nothing, to my thinking, can exceed for beauty the picture made by the majestic Tulipa Vitellina, with its beautifully held cups of palest lemon color, when supported by the lavender trusses of Phlox divaricata — and the stems of that, in turn. COLOR HARMONIES almost hidden by the fine Phlox subulata, var. lilacina. Long reaches of these three flowers hap- pily planted, or a tiny corner against shrubbery — it matters not one whit which — "and then my heart with pleasure fills !" What a wonderful thing to see below the glowing buds and blossoms of the Japanese quince clusters of tulip La Mer- veille or — but not and — tulip Couleur Cardinal. La Merveille, with its tremendously telling orange- red hues, puts dash into the picture; Couleur Car- dinal, sombreness, richness. No one could think for one moment of allowing these tulips to appear near each other. Crocus and early-flowering things below and among the shrubs, to bloom when the quince is leafless; tulips toward the grass, to show when tiny points of green and the red quince blossoms make a fiery mist above them. The lucky householder or gardener who has sometime placed a group of the glorious shrub, Mahonia, on his ground, may like a planting which has seemed good to me against the shining dark-green of its low branches. Narcissus poetaz, var. Elvira, to bloom with the lavender hyacinth Lord Derby or Holbein; with the gay tulip Ver- milion Brilliant near by, and some groups or col- onies of tulip Couleur Cardinal associated with 83 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN these. The fine Darwin tuHp Fanny, used with masses of Phlox divaricata and Phlox subulata, var. lilacina, below it, is a marvel of color. Mr. Hunt's description of Fanny I give: "Clear, rosy pink, with white centre marked blue. Not a large flower but one of exquisite color and form." I have never yet made a May pilgrimage to Mont- clair, but I know I should be a wiser gardener if I might, for Mr. Hunt's blooming tulips must be worth many a league's journey. Nothing I have ever had upon our small place has given me more spring pleasure than the plant- ing which I next describe. A shrub, two tulips, and a primula. The shrub was Spircea Thun- bergii, with its delicate white sprays of flowers. Below and among these spireas are the great tulip La Merveille, orange-scarlet, and the old double Count of Leicester, in tawny-orange shades — and before the tulips lay low masses of the Mun- stead primrose. On this primrose, which fares so well with me, I have enlarged so often and so vol- ubly that I fear the reader is weary of my praises. But to me it is an essential of the spring. With this primrose, with the hardy forget-me-nots, and arabis, the lemon-colored alyssum, the lavender creeping phloxes, and with a charming low-grow- 84 COLOR HARMONIES ing thing whose name is Lamium maculatum (the gray-green leaves have a rather vague whitish marking upon them, and the flowers are of a soft mauve — grow tuHp Wouverman back of these, I beg !) — the most dehghtful effects may be had. As for tulips, again, the loveliest of combina- tions under lilacs, or immediately before them, would surely ensue if groups of tulips Fanny, Carl Becker, Giant, and Konigin Emma were planted in such spots. And speaking of tulips — the ones just mentioned I got of the Dutch, the originators of the Darwin and Rembrandt tulips and who thereby have made all bulb-growers their eternal debtors. Mr. Krelage gave last autumn to one of his English friends a list of the Darwin tulips he considers the best. These are the ones: Clara Butt, salmon-pink; Crepuscule, pinky lilac; Faust, deep violet; Giant, deep purplish-crimson; La Candeur, ivory-white; La Tristesse, slaty blue; Madame Krelage, rosy pink; Margaret, soft pink, almost blush; Mr. Farncombe Sanders, rosy crimson; Prince of the Netherlands, cerise-car- mine; Raphael, purplish violet; and Haarlem, a giant salmony orange-red. Five of these I have 85 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN grown. The man to whom this list was given, a distinguished judge of flowers, comments on the evident partiaUty of Mr. Krelage for the rich deep-purples, as shown by these choices of his own. Last spring Miss Jekyll wrote of her pleasure in some beautiful varieties of tulips, Darwins and Cottage both, sent her as cut blooms by a well- known grower. And I was so charmed with her description of these, especially with what she said of the purple and bronze tones of some of them, that I cleared out a lot of shrubbery to make room, and planted last fall the following groups: Ew- bank and Morales together, Faust, Grand Mo- narque, Purple Perfection, and D. T. Fish; Bronze King, Bronze Queen, Golden Bronze, Dom Pedro, Louis XIV; Salmon Prince, Orange King, Pan- orama, Orange Globe, and La Merveille. I am not a collector; but how readily, save for one reason, could I become one, in ten different directions in the world of flowers ! Tulips should be one of my choices; the narcissus another; no one could pass by the iris. The collecting of tulips is, I fancy, simple beside, say, that of daffodils. The varieties of the daffodil are so many, the classes not as yet quite clearly defined; while the TIUP VIKll)lFI>ORA PRAECOX COLOR HARMONIES tulip is simplicity itself, except when it comes to tulip species — there the botanist comes to the front and no unlearned ones need apply. Tulips are unfailing, certain to appear. No coaxing is necessary, nor do they require special positions. They may, for instance, grow among peonies; they are delightful among grapes. While the narcissus may not flourish among peonies, because of the amount of manure needed by the latter, tulips come gloriously forth. The question was put to me some time since by Doctor Miller as to the probability of injury to or failure of narcissus when planted among peonies, on account of the amount of manure generally used among such roots — the statement made originally, I believe, by some English writer. May I give here the opin- ion of an English authority on daffodils in his own words ? "As to daffodils among peonies — well, if you don't get manure (new) among their roots, and only top-dress with farmyard or stable manure, using bonemeal underground, I think many daf- fodils would do very well; but you should try them from more places than one when you buy. Like humans and others, a rich diet coming on top of a long-drawn-out poor one upsets matters." 87 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN Crocus-collecting, judging from what Mr. E. Augustus Bowles writes of it, must have charms indeed. I confess to the germ of the fever in the shape of several of Mr. Bowles's delightfully read- able articles safely put away in a letter-file. Each time I take these out to reread them, I grow a little weaker; and by next July when fresh lists of crocus species lay their fatal hand upon me, I expect to be a crocus-bed-ridden invalid indeed ! VII THE CROCUS AND OTHER EARLY BULBS 'The groundflame of the crocus breaks the mould. Fair Spring slides hither o'er the Southern sea." — Tennyson. VII THE CROCUS AND OTHER EARLY BULBS TET me begin by presenting these "rumina- -*-' tions," as he calls them, from the pen of the Reverend Joseph Jacob, of England, whose name is known wherever two or three daffodils or as many tuhps are gathered together. "Was there ever a time," writes he, "when bulbs were not pop- ular? Probably not. At all events, there is not much doubt about it at the present time. Every horticultural firm which considers itself at all *up' in the world considers one of its annual necessities the issuing of a bulb-list. Contrari- wise, the reception and perusal of these lists are among the perennial pleasures of every one who has a garden. Bulbs are wonderfully accommo- dating things. I have a tortoise which we call Timmie, and for the last three months he has been fast asleep under some nice dry leaves in the cellar. Just now, with a little careful packing, he could very easily undertake a long journey. 91 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN "Bulbous plants are the 'Timmies' of the vege- table kingdom. When they have retired into their shells, they can be sent about so readily and so safely that if they lived to about ten times the age of Methuselah, I should not be surprised to find that, if it is really true what botanists tell about dispersion and propagation being the two things that plants worry themselves most about, then all well-brought-up plantlets would be taught, just as we teach the 'three R's' to-day, how to take on a bulbous state as an essential part of their life cycle." With Mr. Jacob's whimsical wish I heartily agree, more particularly as I recall the few choice aubrietias by post from Ireland, the glories in delphinium from England in the same manner, all of which, when opened, were found to be exhausted by their journey. Now, before rushing toward — before leaping to our main flower, the crocus, may I pay a word of tribute to the tribe of muscari, the grape hya- cinth.^ While these small bits of perfection in flowers, in blue flowers — yes, a true blue in some forms — are wonderful in color, they must, in my experience, be packed closely together in planting for any really good effect. While several flowers 92 EARLY BULBS come from each crocus bulb set in earth, from Muscari azureum, the small and early sky-blue, I usually have but two, and the tiny things seem not to spread, to multiply, as the crocus does. Of the other grape hyacinths, a dehghtful color picture is seen each May on either side of my little brick walk. The late muscari Heavenly Blue clusters below the pale-yellow lily-like heads of Tulipa retrqilexa, and below the grape hyacinth (whose strong dark-blue has a metallic quality) quantities of fine myosotis plants are blooming at the same moment. The earliest muscari are true crocus companions — azureum in dense companies, with crocus Mont Blanc — or with such a lavender as Madame Mina a most unusual color combination may be made. Since the spring of 1912 I have felt that I must take up my pen for the crocus, to introduce it in a few of its newer and less-known varieties to those who have never grown those at all. The desire to get "something for nothing" is quite as noticeable among the guild of amateur gardeners as among those who find joy in bar- gain sales. And in the crocus we have first of all 93 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN a bargain. Thousands for a few dollars, hundreds for some cents. Next in cheapness to seeds they are; and have a habit, when not bothered by a nervous or too transplanting owner, of multiply- ing in a fashion comforting to see. In the nine years in which I have been growing the crocus on our small piece of ground, I cannot now remember having lost any except in cases where the growth of overhanging or overhungry shrubbery has eaten up the little things at its feet. One of my first plantings before the bare east wall of brick of a then new house was of the cro- cus Reine Blanche, a fine white, in groups now dense, now more open, with hosts of Scilla Sibi- rica crowding among them, and that first glory of the tulip family, Kaufmanniana, holding outspread back of and above the little blue-and-white multi- tude its Hlylike flowers — flowers which only open to the sun. Tulipa Kaufmanniana is costly, I admit, and growing more so, but, as in the case of Darwin and May-flowering tulips, many of which are rapidly increasing in value, delays are dangerous. Therefore, buy now if possible. I must have often described it before — its general color within the flower a rich cream, running into clear yellow toward the centre of the bloom; on 94 EARLY BULBS the outside of each petal a broad band of dull reddish-rose. To myself I called it a water-lily long before I read that it had been often described as the water-Uly tulip. In warm corners it has opened with me (latitude of Boston) as early as March 25, though its usual flowering time in our climate is mid-April. Among the florists' varieties of crocus, the one with true magnificence of form and color is Crocus purpureus, var. grandiflorus. Magnificent is a large adjective to apply to a low-growing flower; ordinarily one should reserve it for the altheas, or the finer gladioli, sensational in their beauty. But it is a fact that people unaccustomed to the sight of so large and fine a crocus as this can sometimes not be persuaded that it is a crocus; therefore, the word may be permitted. And when close-growing numbers of this particular beauty are near other close colonies of S cilia Sibirica, there is then a spring effect worth going far to see, Maximilian, a clear light-lavender, is a fa- vorite with me. Madame Mina, white with rich lavender stripes the length of its fine petals, is a beauteous flower; and Reine Blanche, of which mention has just been made, one of the loveliest imaginable whites. Mont Blanc, white, is also 95 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN very fine. In these whites, and in Madame Mina as well, the rich orange stigma gives a very glow- ing effect as one looks down into the crocus cup. As for the yellow crocuses, I never look at them if I can help it! I have a few remnants of them from misguided purchases of years gone by, but I am always meaning to clear them out and al- ways forgetting to do it till their small squat flowers are gone and the track of the position of the bulbs is lost. This antipathy to the yellow florists' crocus, which, let me add, does not extend in my case to the yellow of the species crocus, may be the prejudice of ignorance, for of varieties other than Cloth of Gold and Large Yellow I know nothing. In these the yellow is the crude yellow of the dandelion (a flower I hate with all my might) ! Mr. E. A. Bowles, of Waltham Cross, England, tells us that the more deHcate and subtle tones of yellow are to be found in sev- eral varieties of crocus species; it is to these that I plan to turn my attention with great ardor another season. Few of these species crocus do I already know in my own borders — only half a dozen — and as I beheve readers will rejoice as I have done in some of Mr. Bowles's enthusiastic comments 96 EARLY BULBS on or descriptions of these flowers, I offer no apol- ogy for quoting from him, as I mention the flowers of which he knows so much, through years of col- lecting, growing, and study. Now, in spite of my aversion to the large yel- low florists' crocus, I do like Crocus susianus, which is one of the bright-yellows before mentioned (Color chart. Cadmium yellow. No. 1) . But Crocus susianus, blooming as early as April 9, planted very thickly, gave in my border the interesting impression of a large-flowering yellow Phlox suhu- lata — practically no green leaf visible below the masses of bloom. Five to seven flowers appear in small, tight bunches from one bulb; and back of and among this flowering mass of yellow I had colonies of the white crocus Mont Blanc. Let me commend this very simple and unstudied ar- rangement. C. susianus is much dwarfer than Mont Blanc, therefore have it mainly to the front. Crocus Sieberi I call a warm pinkish-lavender (Color chart, Violet mauve, No. 1). Six to eight flowers come from a bulb, and the bright-orange stigmata within give a glowing centre to the little flower. This is very small and low. Mr. Bowles calls it a "crocus for everj^ garden" and adds that 97 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN it "seeds freely and soon spreads in any sunny border." "Crocus Korolkowi,'' to quote Mr. Bowles again, "from the far East, has two good points — it flowers early and is of a peculiarly brilliant form of yellow." This little crocus I have grown for a few years myself, and it always surprises me by appearing practically with the snowdrop. Crocus biflorus, the "Scotch crocus," is white, with pencillings of grayish mauve on its three outer petals. The markings are exquisite and the early blooming of this crocus marks it as a specially necessary one. My prime favorite among all these species cro- cus is Crocus Tommasinianus. It is tall, slender, delicate, with narrow, pointed petals, of a lovely lavender, slightly bluer than Sieberi. An orange pistil within it is like a vivid star. It has great height of stem, and tapering form of flower. It is the one which most delights me as a novice in crocus-collecting; and last spring, in a limited space where the ground runs up into a rather steepish slope for a few feet, which slope is cov- ered by a thick group of the little tree known as the garland thorn, there beneath the small tree stems I hope to see next spring hundreds of little EARLY BULBS candles, lavender candles of Crocus Tommasini- anus running up the tiny hillside, and racing along beside them a company of Galanthus Elwesii, their companions in time of bloom. "I have found," writes Mr. Bowles, "C. Tommasinianus so far to prove the most satisfactory of the wild species for spreading and holding its own when planted in grass." Several beautiful new seedling crocuses have come within a few years from Holland — May and Dorothea — the latter a "soft, pale lavender- mauve," May "a beautiful white of fine form." These two I have; not, however, Kathleen Par- low, said to be an extra-fine white, with wonder- ful orange anthers, nor Distinction, the nearest approach to a pink color in crocus. The beauty of tulip Kaujmanniana was never, I fancy, better set forth in a photograph than in that which is shown on page 98. To the kind- ness of Mr. Bowles himself I owe this picture of perfect spring loveliness, and to the kindness of the distinguished Scottish amateur Mr. S. Arnott the picture of the blue grape hyacinth, Hyacinthus lineatus azureus. This flowered in Mr. Arnott's garden in February, 1912, and is, I believe, a rare variety. 99. THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN To my eyes it is so charming a picture of the type that its inclusion here will surely give pleasure to those to whom these "small and early" things are objects of interest. 100 VIII COLOR ARRANGEMENTS FOR DARWIN TULIPS AND OTHER SPRING-FLOWER- ING BULBS 'Along the lawns the tulip lamps are lit.'* — Rosamund Marriott Watsox. VIII COLOR ARRANGEMENTS FOR DARWIN TULIPS AND OTHER SPRING-FLOWER- ING BULBS I BELIEVE I shall always remember May, 1913, as the Darwinian May. As the mention of this adjective is doubtless music to the ear of the scientist, so its sound is equally delectable to the possessor and lover of the Darwin tulips. In a bit of writing appearing some time ago in this journal, I set down a list of Darwins arranged for color combination, taken from a fine English source. These I tried for the first time this year; and I assure the reader when I saw them I fell down and worshipped. A pageant of color, a marvellous procession of flowery grandeur — no words are mine in which to tell of my sensations on seeing this beauty for the first time; and the sensations were not mine alone. They were shared by all those who saw them, among them some sophisticated eyes, eyes which might not show delight without good cause. 103 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN The color arrangement proved not so good as I had hoped. And, thanks to an ingenious guest, we rearranged for next year in this fashion: One tuhp of each variety was cut and labelled with a slip of paper. These cut tulips were then placed in the open spaces of the rattan or cane seat of a Chinese chair, the large flowers resting against the back and sides of the chair. The round open- ings in the woven cane exactly admitted the stiff stems of the Darwins; the background of basket- looking stuff was most becoming to the gay flowers, and at our leisure, seated in comfort be- fore our tulip galaxy, we arranged and rearranged till the following plan evolved itself — a plan of which I append a rather feebly drawn chart — a plan, however, which I recommend with my whole heart, a Darwinian theory less abstruse if not more certain in its outcome than that of him in whose honor these noble spring flowers are named. Another probably successful arrangement of spring flowers suggests itself. Why should not the tall lemon-colored blooms of Tulipa Vitellina show back of rather close groupings of Scilla cam- panulata's lavender bells, while the tender yellow of Alyssum saxatile, var. sulphureum, creates a charming foreground ? The three flowers bloomed 104 TUUP SAFRAXO (bKIMSTOKe) AND MYOSOTIS BELOW YOUNG LILACS COLOR ARRANGEMENTS with mc 'Ms year at the same time, and I cannot but advise a trial planting of them together — say a dozen of the tulips, fifty scillas, and six or seven roots of the beautiful hardy alyssum, and you have a picture which a true "garden soul'* will feel beneath the ground in winter. This could be done in a spot apart, a bit of ground sacred to adventures in flowers. And while we are on adventures in flowers, may I impart a few impressions of some tulips seen this spring for the first time ? Really revela- tions — some of them unspeakably beautiful. Coming, for instance, unexpectedly upon Tulipa viridiflora was like coming upon a specially beau- tiful green-and-white trillium in a wood. This tulip has that precious look of not having been evolved. Yet it is a May-flowering or cottage tulip. What pleasure in a few bulbs of this unique flower, in its aspect of untouchedness ! It cannot be possible, one thinks, that the deli- cate bands of green up and down its palest yel- low-painted petals were not set there by the skil- ful eye and brush of perhaps the Japanese ! Tulip The Fawn, a Darwin this, was almost un- believable in its beauty. No description of it in print satisfies me. May I here give my own? 105 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN Pale amber to cream-color outside, suffused with soft pinkish lavender, the whole effect that of a tea-rose. Why not give it a subtitle — the tea-rose tulip ? And why not grow it with that deep, rich purple Darwin Faust? The contrast between these two is tremendously striking, yet there is a certain harmony of tone which allows of their dwelling together not only in peace but in beauty. Gudin, a tall tulip of a pale-mauve hue, look- ing its best near a group of the stately Innocence, was another of the wonders of the spring. Or- pheus was a charming flower turning to warm rose in its last days; Emerald Gem, oddly named when its richest of salmon blooms are considered, with Orange Globe should form a combination of bril- liant color unsurpassed; and in Dom Pedro we have a Breeder tulip, a flower of wonderful ma- hogany tones which I should ever choose to see associated with Coridion, lovely "clear yellow with stripe of lilac through centre of petal." About June 3 comes Ixiolirion macrantha, like a small lavender lily, with delicate tubular flowers, as many as a dozen up and down the graceful waving stem. The leafage of this flower is scanty; what there is, is of a grayish-green which makes the flower a fit companion for the dusty miller 106 COLOR ARRANGEMENTS {Senecio cineraria). The ixiolirion is one of the bravest of bulbs, coming triumphantly through the bitter frosts of last winter. Ixiolirion pallasi is named as a good one, and this I hope to try. The lasting quahty of ixiolirion in water is one of its recommendations; and because it is so very perfect when cut, if used with sprays of Deutzia Lemoineii — for daytime use on the table, that is, for I have yet to find the blue that can prop- erly be used under artificial light — I hope to let a quantity of these beautiful waving things blow near and before the low bushes of the deutzia next spring. These will follow the tiny Italian Tulipa clusiana, whose slender beauty grows dearer every year. Clusiana is neighbored by Puschkinia and the two are preceded by some species of crocus — the Scotch, I think, var. C. hiflorus pusillus. So we achieve an uncommon spring planting, delicate and lovely for weeks from the end of April to the first of June, always interesting whether the small flowers are coming or going — and if planted with judgment and discrimination as to natural-looking arrangement, regard to height and color, we may without fear of disap- pointment think in December of the rare joys in 107 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN store for us in that spot when it shall have been touched by the suns of spring. A charming happening has just taken place in the borders. The bush honeysuckles of Michigan were never more gloriously covered with their veils of white and rose than this spring. It may have been the gradually warming season, the uninter- rupted progress from leaf -bud to blossom; in any case, the tale is the same all about us — the loni- ceras have been remarkably fine. Below a tower- ing group of Lonicera, var. bella albida, whose flowers in early June are just passing, crowds of the swaying long-spurred hybrid aquilegias bloom and blow. Most of us now know the unusual deli- cacy and range of color in these charming flowers — faint pinks, yellows, blues, and lavenders — all pale and poised as they are. But oh ! to catch beyond, under the shadow of the honeysuckle boughs, as I did but now, the sight of masses of blooming pink scillas, Scilla campanulata, var. rosea, at precisely the moment and in precisely the place where its modest beauty was most perfectly displayed — to have this as a surprise, not a special plan — here was a pleasure of a quality all too seldom felt and known. Noth- ing could carry on and repeat the tones of the pink 108 COLOR ARRANGEMENTS and lavender aquilegias as does this loveliest of late scillas. In appearance more like a tall lily- of-the-valley than any other flower I can call to mind, in tone so cool a pink that it is perfect in combination with the blue, lavender, or pink col- umbines. It is enchanting as their neighbor and far more interesting thus used than in the more commonplace proximity to its cousin or sister, the lavender Scilla campanulatay var. excelsior, blooming at the same time. To me it would be dull to see sheets of these two spring flowers near each other or intermingling. Dull, I mean, com- pared with such a possibihty as the combination I have tried to describe and which was simply one of those heavenly accidents befalling all too rarely the ardent gardener. On this June day the buds in my garden are almost as enchanting as the open flowers. Things in bud bring, in the heat of a June noontide, the recollection of the loveliest days of the year — those days of May when all is suggested, nothing yet fulfilled. To-day I have been looking at something one of these photographs feebly tries to show — tall spikes of pale-pink Canterbury bells, the flowers unusually large, standing against a softly rounding background of gypsophila in 109 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN bud; to the left of the campanulas, leaves of Iris 'pallida Dalmatica, so tall that their presence is immediately felt; a little before, but still to the left of the pink spikes and the iris, perhaps a dozen tall silvery velvet stems of Stachys lanata, whose tiny flowers give but a hint of their pale lavender as yet, and are lost in the whiteness of the young leaflets, and — and this is the thing which really creates the picture — three or four spreading branches, a foot from the ground and directly below the campanulas, of Statice incana Silver Cloud, tiny points of white showing that the whole dense spray will soon be full of flowers. Below and among the campanulas (which I keep in bloom a very long time by a careful daily taking off of every shrivelling bloom) stand sal- mon-pink balsams, these to replace with their two- foot masses of flowers the campanulas when the latter's day is over and to rise above the gray- white leaves of the stachys when its blooming time is also past. This stachys is a lovely ad- junct to the garden. The texture of its leaves is a matter of surprise to every one who touches them. Most people would call stachys "woolly," but I do not like this word — (is it because I live in the West ?) — and why apply an unpoetic 110 PINK CANTERBURY BELLS, STACHYS LANATA ■'i: vr ''' ij.''' i4^" ■ ~» ^*'* r''4 From '• The Garden Month by Month." By courtesy of Frederick A. Stoket Company BELLIS PERENNIS AND NARCISSUS POETICUS COLOR ARRANGEMENTS word to any one of the lovely inhabitants of our gardens ? It came about that a space before the bush honeysuckles — the pink flowering variety, Loni- cera Tatarica, var. rosea — in a border, needed fill- ing with lower shrubs. The piece of ground to be furnished was perhaps fifteen feet long by three wide, though irregular in both width and outhne. Last autumn Rosa nitida had been there set out, planted about three feet apart. Bare ground for this year and next was sure to spoil the look of things while these roses were yet young, and a covering for it was thus managed. Canterbury- bell plants were distributed in small groups among the roses, especially toward the back of the border; and English irises, Rossini and Mr. Veen, were tucked in in longish colonies before and among the campanulas. In ordinary seasons these irises might not have bloomed with the campanulas, but this year it was Monte Cristo-hke — the flower and the hour ! — with a resultant superb effect of color. Mr. Veen, a true violet iris, Ros- sini, a purplish-blue, were good together to me, who differ from Miss Jekyll in possessing a penchant for blue combined with purple or with lavender. To compare a bloom of one of these irises with lU THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN a spray of the Dropinore anchusa is to get an ex- tremely vivid and interesting idea of the effect of colors upon each other. Taken alone, Iris xiphioides, var. Mr. Veen, is a blue without very much purple in its tone; beside the anchusa all the blue vanishes — the iris is a distinct purple; place it beside Rossini, it becomes blue again; and grow masses of Rossini below the anchusa, es- pecially the variety Opal, and there is one of the most beautiful juxtapositions possible in flowers — so far as I know an original combination of color and one to charm an artist, I believe. An- chusa of a year's standing, a three-foot anchusa, might be best to use in this way. The two-foot iris would prove a good companion. There follows, soon after the gray-and-pink com- bination in my garden of which I spoke a few paragraphs back, the combination of pink Cam- panula medium and Stachys lanata, a time when one of the loveliest of all double poppies lights up the little place with color. For this poppy — an annual — there is no registered name. It is dou- ble, extremely full, perhaps three feet in height, and of a delicious rosy -pink, exactly the pink of the best mallows, or of the enchanting half-open rose- buds of the ever-lovely rambler Lady Gay. To 112 COLOR ARRANGEMENTS see three or four of these poppies in full bloom among the white mist of gypsophila, either single or double, the oat-green of the poppy leaves below, is to see something more delicately beauti- ful than often occurs in gardens. Many packets of the seed of my poppy are always in readiness, as I have a superabundance of the same; and if ten people read these words, and if, peradven- ture, there be ten gardeners with vision to see through the veil of these sentences the rose-pink beauty of this flower, let them ask for a bit of this seed, for it is theirs for the asking ! The love of flowers brings surely with it the love of all the green world. For love of flowers every blooming square in cottage gardens seen from the flying windows of the train has its true and touching message for the traveller; every bush and tree in nearer field and farther wood becomes an object of delight and stirs delightful thought. When I see a rhubarb plant in a small rural garden, I respect the man, or more generally the woman, who placed it there. If my eye hghts upon the carefully tended peony held up by a bar- rel hoop, the round group of an old dicentra, the fine upstanding single plant of iris, at once I ex- perience the warmest feeling of friendliness for 113 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN that householder, and wish to know and talk with them about their flowers. For at the bottom there is a bond which breaks down every other difference between us. We are "Garden Souls." IX NOTES ON SPRING FLOWERS 'April appeared, the green earth's impulse came Pushing the singing sap until each bud Trembled with delicate life as soft as flame. Filled with the mighty heart-beat as with blood.' IX NOTES ON SPRING FLOWERS AN ever-astonishing thing to me in gardening is - the overlapping of the times of bloom in flowers. As I walk about in May I am sure to see some inhabitant of the borders up and doing, earlier than I think he should be. One is ab- sorbed in what is already open; the budding of coming flowers goes unnoticed and their little soft, colorful cries for attention come as a surprise. Under an ancient thorn, known to Professor Sargent and a few others as Crataegus punctata — a thorn which stands against old apple-trees, and which, as soon as the petals of apple-blossoms have fallen and disappeared, becomes a wreath of white against the apple-leaves — under this blooming thorn there stands in a bold group the fine late tuhp, Flava. This tulip has a way of fading in curious and beautiful fashion. In its first stage it is one of the grandest and most imposing of early flowers; its bloom is held high in air; its stem is absolutely erect; its color a soft straw- 117 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN yellow; its leaves very low, large, and of a fine bluish-green; the blooms open wide, their four petals at the top of the stalk, like lilies held erect, and the inside of each petal seems to take on a certain pallor toward the centre, leaving an edge of deeper tone. The effect is indescribably beau- tiful in its way — a tulip swan-song, thought I, as I gazed. A fine tulip new to me last spring was Nau- ticas. Here the color within the petals is Vin de Bordeaux No. 1, shading toward the upper edges to Rose lilace No. 2.* The inner basal spots of Nauticas are of Indigo grisatre No. 1, very strik- ing in effect; and the leaves of this tall tulip were of so rarely good a green that even their color was recorded. It proved to be a trifle darker than Vert bouteille No. 4. If any reader wonders at my enthusiasm for this tulip, a flower incompara- ble as it seems to me, let him place next each other the color plates here mentioned, imagine a finely rising stem and large broad leaves, of the richest of greens, crowned by a rose-purple flower of per- fect form. He will wonder no more that the tulip is thus commended. * Color references apply either to the French color chart " Repertoire de Couleurs," or to "Color Standards and Color Nomenclature," by Dr. Robert Ridgway. 118 SPRING FLOWERS Of Zomerschoon the rare, the beautiful, I own but a dozen bulbs. A detailed description from the color chart is necessary, as this wonder among tulips has many colors. The upper outside of inner petals shows Rouge d'Andrinople No. 1, but a trifle lighter than the shade in the plate. There is remarkable life in this color as it appears in the tulip. Flamed and feathered with a true cream-white, with a slightly bluish sheen on the centres of the outer petals, the flower is of inde- scribable beauty. There is not one to equal it for charm, for luscious combination of salmon and cream. It is never likely to become plentiful, it is such a slow one to increase. Although we hear rumors of a possible short- age for next season in tulips in violet, lavender, and bronze tones, it is quite out of the question in these notes to pass by one of these beauties. Mauve Clair, a Darwin variety of unusual quality, is one of the best. The general tone of this tulip is Violet de Parme No. 1, while the flame or mark- ing of the outer petals is of Violet d'aconit No. 1. Tulip Bouton d'Or, whose yellow as seen in the French chart is Jaune cadmium No. 1, has a per- fectly unvarying tone throughout the flower. Thus I found several of these tulips; yet again, 119 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN with other blooms of Bouton d'Or, Jaune chrome moyen No. 1, petals edged with No. 3 of the same color, seemed a more perfect description. I give the two for accuracy's sake. The black anthers of Bouton d'Or add appreciably to its interest. A tulip of far paler yellow than Bouton d'Or is Moonlight, another cottage tulip, so elegant, so distinguished, as to relegate Bouton d'Or at once to a sort of tulip bourgeoisie. Moonlight is beautifully named, with its pale tones of yellow and charmingly proportioned flower. The gen- eral tone of Moonlight in the chart is Jaune citron No. 1 or Jaune prima vere No. 1 ; within its petals Jaune soufre No. 4 prevails. While among the yellow tulips, Sprengeri, the latest of all tulips to bloom, must not be over- looked. Tulipa Sprengeri, to be sure, is not yel- low; it is an orange-scarlet and thereby related to the yellows (Orange de Mars No. 2, edges of inner petals Orange rougeatre No. 1). The out- side of each outer petal is flamed through the centre with Rouge cuivre. This tulip I have growing among close-packed roots of a pearl-gray German iris, name unknown. The two come into flower simultaneously; the tulip is quite as tall as the iris, and the two flowers are strikingly 120 SPRING FLOWERS good together. Sprengeri grows taller with me than any other tulip, Louis XIV alone excepted. It is a persistent grower, too, appearing year after year as do almost no others except Tulipa Gesneriana, var. rosea, that gay and resolute little bloom always so enchanting above forget-me- nots. Near Philadelphia last spring a marvellously lovely combination of tulips and iris was to be seen. A long, narrow bed had been made in the centre of a similarly long and narrow piece of sward. This straight hne was a glowing band of German iris of the richest purple-blue, and of a brilliant yellow tulip set in tall and ordered groups alternating in effective fashion with the iris. Of the tulips there seemed to be fifteen or twenty in a group, and the variety, I thought, was Mrs. Moon. The name of the iris is wanting; but it was the counterpart of one of my own which I owe to the kindness of a farmer's wife, and whose colors, according to the chart, are Bleu d'aniline No. 4 in the standards and Violet de violette in the falls. A further suggestion for iris-and-tulip grouping (this from an English source) is a bold use of the deep purple-blue iris thinly interspersed with the 121 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN lavender Darwin tulip Reverend H. Ewbank. In my own part of the country it is rarely that the Darwin or May-flowering tulip overlaps in time of bloom upon the German iris, but in the lati- tude of Philadelphia these plants may be expected to give flowers together. A group of Darwins in brilliant cherry-rose tones we may notice next. These gay occupants of the spring border hold less charm for me than some of their less flaunting fellows, the reason being the difficulty of combining them well with tulips of other colors. True, they may serve as a climax where first lavender, then deep-violet tulips are used in successive groupings. But with white tulips, dead-white, they are not agreeable to the eye; with primrose and yellow they do not particularly agree; with mauve and bronze not at all. The two which shall be singled out for special mention are both Darwins, Professor Fran- cis Darwin and Edmee. The tones of Professor Darwin according to the chart are Rouge fraise No. 2 within the petals, Vin de Bordeaux No. 2 outside. This tulip has a pale lemon-colored pistil and a prismatic blue-black base. In Edmee the outer petals are of Amaranthe No. 1, with much blue in these pinkish tones. These tulips 122 DARWIN TULIPS WITH IRIS GERMANICA SPRING FLOWERS are beauteous instances of the development of their race. Let me suggest to those who do not yet know the newer Darwins, Cottage tuhps, Breeders, and Rembrandts an investment in a few bulbs next fall, if only a half-dozen of each of some of the finer varieties, and, each for himself, see the won- ders of these flowers. Make your selections now and place your orders at once for fall delivery. In the first three classes, if I were to choose four out of each as introductory lists, they should be these : Cottage or May -flowering Tulips: Retroflexa su- perba. Moonlight, the Fawn, Inglescombe Pink. Darwins: Clara Butt, Reverend H. Ewbank, Gudin, and Sophrosyne. Breeders: Coridion, Golden Bronze, Louis XIV, Goldfinch, Velvet King, and Cardinal Manning. These are but short lists, not combinations of color — samples of some of the finer varieties in the three classes. Would that I might have named Zomerschoon in the Cottage group — Zo- merschoon, that too costly tulip of unforgettable beauty. And now for a few combinations of tulips with other flowers. The gayest knot of flowers of 123 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN spring may be produced by the joint use of Tulipa Gesneriana, var. rosea^ with one of the taller forget- me-nots, such as Perfection or Royal Blue. In this vivid-crimson tulip there is a dull-blue base; something of that blue is perhaps imparted to the rosy chalice of the flower and makes it perfect company for the sweetest of pale blossoms. Mr. Divers, head gardener to the Duke of Rutland, makes these suggestions as to combina- tions of tulips and low-growing plants to flower together: Couleur Cardinal, a single early tulip, with Phlox divaricata; tulip Picotee is also rec- ommended with the phlox; and the same fine tulip with myosotis Royal Blue. This should be exceedingly good, especially as we recall the rosy flushing of Picotee as it ages. For a very lively effect, tulip Vermilion Brilliant is suggested as a companion to the pale-yellow primrose. Mr. Divers uses ribbon grass {Phalaris arundinacea, var. variegata) with Phlox divaricata, tulip Picotee, and Auhrietia Leichtlini, plants which when prop- erly set with relation to each other's heights and habits must surely make a perfect picture in lavender and rose. Another authority on tulips would have tulip Thomas Moore, that tawny-orange flower, rise SPRING FLOWERS above yellow primroses; the Darwin Erguste bloom over Phlox divaricata, or Bouton d'Or with myosotis. All these are good; and a trial of any two together must convince the doubter that half spring's pleasure lies in tulip time. Tulip Bouton d'Or, almost droll in its fat round- ness, and whose rare rich yellow is already de- scribed, proved most excellent in conjunction with the cushion irises in flower, such varieties as Isis and Helense. Their strange red-purples were very sumptuous among groups of these tulips. Tulip Le Reve, that flower w^hose beauty is one of my perennial delights, showed a peculiar charm rising among colonies of Mertensia Virginica. The general tone of Le Reve, according to the color chart, is Rose brule No. 1; the petals are feath- ered with Rose violace No. 4, while the centres of the outer petals show Lilas rougeatre. The mertensia flowers are of Bleu d'azur No. 1, though more lavender-blue and with greater depth of tone. The buds are of Violet de cobalt No. 1, the leaves Vert civette No. 3. A suggestion for spring planting noted last season was the remarkably rich effect of tulips Purple Perfection, Vitcllina, and Innocence with cut buds and blooms of the superb purple lilac Ludwig 125 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN Spaeth. A noble combination, this, for a border in which interesting and original color is desired. Tulip President Lincoln I thought a great find. The chart description of it would be this: darkest tone of petal, Violet d'iris No. 2; paler part of petal, Lilas violace No. 2. Let me suggest with every confidence in its value the growing of Presi- dent Lincoln with the two tulips, Mrs. Collier and Doctor Hardy, shown in color on the cover of the Reverend Joseph Jacob's capital book, ''Tuhps," that book written from "the innate fire of an enthusiast's heart." The Fawn, the well-known Darwin tulip, was grown among two- year-old plants of Hydrangea arborescens. Blanc rose No. 3, in the chart, gives an idea of the tone of the outer petals of this very wonderful flower, but its luminous quality will not be de- scribed. An underlying tone of palest yellow in the tulip made it peculiarly lovely among the leaves of the hydrangea. I have come to believe myself among the most impressionable of gardeners; delighted at the least indication of the love of flowers in a casual acquaintance; ever ready to set off at short no- tice to look at gardens; but not always so de- lighted with what I find. And since there is in U6 SPRING FLOWERS me this critical quality, born doubtless of much looking and comparing when I see, as I saw lately, a garden comparatively small in compass but in- comparably interesting, my heart fills with a plea- sure not unlike the poet's at the sight of the cele- brated daffodils. In this garden, some of it under tall trees, a city garden not a hundred miles from where I live, on a day in earliest June, there was to be seen a most lovely flower grouping, in which the following flowers had place: Masses of that wonderful pinkish-mauve Iris palliday Queen of May, tall lupines of rich blue near by, with Iris Madame Chereau back of this, while before the group and among it were opening on tall stems the luscious silken salmon-pink flowers of the two Oriental poppies Mrs. Perry and Mary Stud- holme. Below these the coral bells of heucheras (alum-root) hung at the tops of slender swaying stems, a shghtly richer note of pink than the poppies. As I beheld this beauty in flowers, I said to myself: "Here is an end to adjectives." I have none in which to adequately describe this loveliness. It must be seen for its dehcacy, its evanescent quahty. All who garden know the texture of 127 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN the poppy petal, of the flower of the iris. In no medium but water-color could possibly be ex- pressed the beauty, the daring yet delicate beauty, of this arrangement of flowers. I am permitted the privilege of trying to describe it to my readers; and, while my words are weak, I know full well that any flower-grower is to be congratulated who may endeavor to arrange for himself the picture here set forth. All hardy perennials, all very hardy. Do pray experiment with the beauteous blooms; set them out together this coming au- tumn in some sun-warmed spot, and in two years behold a picture unsurpassed for subtle color har- mony and contrast. In this garden again I saw that the superb poppy of the group above, Mrs. Perry, and the ever-glorious Iris pallida, var. Dal- matica, dwell most happily together, the poppy a round flower, a flower on horizontal lines, the iris perpendicular, standards and falls; the greens of iris and of poppy foliage delicately contrasting; in the one the yellow predominating, in the other the blue. 328 A SMALL SPRING FLOWER BORDER ** Though not a whisper of her voice he hear. The buried bulb does know The signals of the year And hails far Summer with his lifted spear." — Coventry Patmore. X A SMALL SPRING FLOWER BORDER THE tale of this border is soon told — not the pleasure of it, for I can assure the reader that from early spring to late autumn, from the hour when peony shoots and bulb leaves first pushed their way through the ground, there has been no moment when this place had not a pecul- iar interest. A slight description written imme- diately after the original planting was made, and first printed in the Bulletin of the Garden Club of America, may here be introduced, thanks to the courtesy of that society. The border in question is a double one, a bal- anced planting on either side of a walk of dark brick about two and a half feet wide. The space allotted to flowers flanking the walk is some three feet. Eight subjects are used; combinations of color, periods of bloom, form and height of flowers and plants, all are considered. At those edges of the borders farthest from 131 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN the walk are peonies of white and palest pink — Madame Emile Galle, that flower of enchant- ment predominating. Next the peonies toward the walk, comes a row of 7m pallida Dalmatica, then an alternating line of Iris Kaempferi and Spiraea astilbe Arendsii Die Walkure; next these the Darwin tulip Agneta planted alternately with English iris Mauve Queen; then the double early- tulip Yellow Rose with myosotis. Bleu Celeste, the double early tulip which Miss Jekyll calls the bluest of tulips, was to have bloomed with the vivid flower of tulip Yellow Rose. But because of Miss Jekyll's commendation of Bleu Celeste, or possibly for the more prosaic reason of crop failure in Holland, my very late order remained unfilled, and Mr. Van Tubergen substituted for it the Darwin Agneta. This, he assures me, is nearly the color of Bleu Celeste. Alas ! unfortunately for me, Agneta blooms after Yellow Rose, thus I may not look for the lovely bands of clear yellow and dull blue which were to have adorned my border in early May. Close to the brick itself are mounds of Myosotis dissiti- flora and Sutton's Royal Blue, an early and a late, while back of these are lines of Alyssum sul- phureum, the hardy one of primrose-yellow. 132 SPRING FLOWER BORDER I count on the Japanese iris as an ally of the English one (though, oddly enough, this was ar- ranged long before war broke out), the latter said to be a delicious shade of pinkish mauve. The cool pink spirea, too, should create a delicate foil for the broad-petalled Iris Kaempferi, and my faint and perhaps foolish hope is that a few forget- me-nots may be tricked into blooming on till iris Mauve Queen shows its color; for of all garden harmonies I dearly love the pale blues and mauves, brilliant blues and deep violets, set over against each other. How charming were the flowers along my little brick walk about the loth of May ! Myosotis half in bloom, and the soft yellow-green buds of Yellow Rose among and above it; tulip Agneta only ranks of pointed buds back of these. One week later great blooms of yellow tulip (was ever tulip better named.'') were in clusters among the myosotis while, above this canary color and blue, Agneta lifted beautiful lilac cups. The effect was indescribably gay and original. Leaves of Iris pallida Dalmatica were now broadening back of the tulips, spirea spreading its delicately cut green and brown-madder foliage between the iris spears, and young peonies repeated these tones 133 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN of spirea leaves in a vigorous row farthest from the walk. The forni and habit of Yellow Rose make it a tulip particularly fit for use with myosotis, but its yellow is too strong in tone for the lilac and sky-blue of the other flowers. Moonlight, how- ever, is too near Agneta in height. Perhaps Brim- stone (Safrano) would be the better subject here, but Brimstone blooms earlier than Yellow Rose. In using Brimstone, however, off should go its head so soon as the rose-pink flush begins to show, since that pink would doubtless to some extent interfere with the effect of the three pale colors here desired, blue, yellow, and lavender. An- other suggestion is, as substitute for the Darwin Agneta the use of the fine tulip Gudin, certainly one of the most ravishing of all the Darwin tribe; or of William Copeland (Sweet Lavender), the beauty whose charming portrait was shown in the colored plate with the issue of the "Garden- ers' Chronicle" (EngHsh) for November, 1914. Brilliant, telling, as these spring flowers were, running from arch to arch and seen against green lawns, after ten days the picture was yet sweeter, for the yellow tulips' race was run, the myosotis had lifted deHcate blue-clad stems in air, and the 134 SPRING FLOWER BORDER Darwin pink-lavender petals were atop of the straightest, tallest of green shafts, so many, so exquisitely erect, that a memory of Velasquez's great canvas "The Lances" flashed into the mind. Blue and lavender, delicious colors near each other, made this walk a place of beauty for days after the yellow tulip blooms had fled. As I have said, this is a beauty of lavender, deep yellow, and pale blue for perhaps two weeks. The early tulip first departs, leaving no void, for the mauve and pale blue then present a picture interesting if more quiet. About the 27th of May tulip petals fall, leaving the myosotis a band of misty blue on either side the walk; and as Ag- neta fades the deep blue-purple Iris Germanica, which has for some days held its shafts of buds closed and ready beside the Darwins, suddenly bursts into great flowers. Unfortunately for my complete satisfaction, there was one of those mis- takes in the identity of roots which must some- times occur in gardens, and only a few of these proved of the variety and the tone required for this setting. There is for a week, the first week of June, a lull. Not, however, uninteresting, for the blue- greens of tulip leaves are still fresh, the iris swords 135 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN are fine to see, and the delicately cut yellow-green of spirea foliage is charming, covering the earth where irises have sprung. Back of these are the young peonies all filled with rounded buds, straight, handsome, and distinct against the smooth-shaven grass beyond the border on either side. July, and the tardy spirea Die Walkiire in this border has not flowered yet. Brownish buds are held above every plant and soon there will be bloom. Although there are now no flowers along the walk, the effect of various types of plant foli- age is exceedingly good. Blue-green leaves of Iris pallida Dalmatica rise among all the spireas at regular intervals — to be exact, eighteen irises on either side; back of these, away from the walk, are dark-green peony leaves ; toward the walk are lines of drying stems of English iris, pale-gray mounds of the hardy alyssum, which I shall have to confess failed to do well this year, but which shall have another invitation to this spot, next time by means of seed-sowing, not transplanting. In May zinnias in those pale tones I so much fancy were sown among the myosotis leaves; by mid- July they were opening their first flowers; and from that time on, the walk was gay till late 136 SPRING FLOWER BORDER October, the rather shallow roots seeming not in the least to affect the welfare of other subjects near them. The illustration shows them in Sep- tember. Back of these borders of flowers since this description was written have since been set close rows of Spircea van Houtteii, whose boughs, in time to come, are to be permitted to fall natu- rally on the side away from the walk, but to be kept close-shaven on that toward the flower- borders so that a formal green background may be supplied. To leave the border now for a few generaliza- tions on the flowers of spring and early summer. The blooms of tulip Jubilee are of varying heights, which gives this tulip a peculiar value, even as the twisting of stem in certain gladioli makes them more valuable for some purposes. Avis Kenni- cott, on the other hand, seems to keep the yard- stick always in mind, and her flowers are a regi- ment of golden magnificence. Ordinarity, I should never place Avis Kennicott near Jubilee and La Fiancee, as they are here; nor should I allow Le Reve to neighbor these. The perfect place for Le Reve is in company with Mertensia Virginica alone, as has often been suggested before. Each year this combination grows upon me. 137 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN The effect of sunlight through the cups of La Fiancee and Jubilee as they stand together up a little slope fairly well covered with young hem- lock spruces, is exceedingly nice. The deep violet of Jubilee and rich lavender-rose of La Fiancee make of them excellent comrades in the border. A drift of tall gold flowers stands farther up, and beyond the group of spruces, which are from three to ten feet high, Heloise shines in the picture with one of the tallest and richest of flowers of a fine deep-red. Beyond Heloise comes Herzogin von Hohenberg, of a medium blue-purple tone, a won- derfully valuable color in Darwins, rising from quantities of myosotis; and far up the rise of ground stands a group of tulip Couleur Cardinal. Beyond these again, and to the right, a whole colony of Tuli'p retroflexa gleams from among the dark gray -green boughs of hemlock and of young white pine. Two or three years ago some charm- ing pictures in the bulb-list of Messrs. E. H. Kre- lage and Sons, of Haarlem, filled me with a desire to see tulips grown among evergreens. The pic- tures from Holland showed this effectively done for a great flower-show at Haarlem, and it seemed to me that nothing could be more lovely, more striking, too, in effect, than the use of bulbs 138 SPRING FLOWER BORDER among small conifers of formal habit. The true place for daffodils, as we all know, is in spring meadows; but tulips require a less careless han- dling, and, while it is true that I have grown them nearly always in loose groups and masses, I am fast coming to the belief that the tulip, from its own aspect, calls for design in planting. Do not for a moment think that I favor the planting suggestions for tulips found in some of the repre- sentative bulb-hsts of America ! Far from it ! Iris Crusader is a magnificent flower. As many as four blooms are open at one time, the lowest a foot below the topmost; for these flowers occur at four places, four angles on the stem. The single flower is a glory, its prevailing tone (Ridgway) a deep bluish-violet. There is some- thing in the spring of the long curves of this flower both in standard and fall which gives it a unique beauty. The brownish penciUing at the top of each fall, the orange-yellow beard which surmounts those charming tones of blue-violet which suffuse the whole, make it a distinguished flower. It is a knight among irises; and, bloom occurring just before the pallida section, it seems to herald a company of nobles of the garden. No flower could bear a fitter name than does this iris; 139 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN whoever named it had a sense of fitness all too rare. The Rembrandt tulip has for the last two or three seasons cast its spell upon me. "America is biting," says an English tulip authority in words better calculated to give pleasure to our friends, the Dutch growers, than to us ! Yet this is true: the charm of the Rembrandt is be- ginning to make itself felt in the land. One of the most interesting of this group is Bougainville Duran, the tones of whose markings are (Ridgway) light vinaceous-purple and neutral red — these laid upon a ground of delicious ivory-white. For richness of color and general beauty of appear- ance this is the finest Rembrandt I have seen. Its use below lilacs, especially below a group of young low-flowering bushes, is sure to give pleas- ure — before Toussaint I'Ouverture, Souvenir de Ludwig Spaeth, those rich red-violets in lilacs, and those bluer ones. President Grevy for instance. Semele is another fine tulip in this class — Ru- cellin-purple, flaked pomegranate-purple. A planting of these four tulips (names below) over or back of a low-flowering plant such as the deep-purple aubrietia, or that new variety which is so warmly commended. Lavender, might make 140 SPRING FLOWER BORDER a good spring picture, the tulips to be Reverend H. Ewbank, Bleu Celeste, Morales, and a very few white ones, such as Innocence or La Candeur. Another plan is to plant well in front of that grand tulip Flava the beautiful lavender Scilla campanulata Excelsior; and between this and the tulip the wonderful mauve iris of about fifteen inches' height, Mrs. Alan Gray. There would be a sight whose loveliness the "scant gray meshes of words" could never catch and show. A fine delicacy of effect this — palest primrose tulip, blue-lavender scilla, and pinkish lavender in the iris blooms. A wondrous new all-yellow iris in the Germanica tribe, named by its originator for Miss C. P. Sher- win, is treasure-trove for the June garden. Aqui- Icgia chrysantha in connection w^ith this iris, or groups of the latter planted below the perfect sprays of that perfect rose known as spinosissima, or, for a livelier picture, the new iris before the vivid blue of the anchusa — beauty could not fail the gardener here. The " hly-flowered " tulips just announced from Holland and never yet shown in America will cre- ate great interest here. Sirene, Adonis, Argo, mar- vellous tones of satiny rose, rich rose, golden yel- 141 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN low, salmon-rose, all with the reflexed petals and tall habit of Tulipa retroflexa, will be welcomed with enthusiasm if they prove as beautiful as their just-named parent. 142 XI NOTES ON SOME OF THE NEWER GLADIOLI "In summer a strew of fresh rushes, mint, and gladiolus (that flower so dear to mediaeval eyes) covered the pave- ment with a cool fragrance, while a bough of some green tree or flowering bush filled the hearth." — (From chapter The Mediaeval Country-House), "The Fields of France," Madame Mary Duclaux. XI NOTES ON SOME OF THE NEWER GLADIOLI IT is November and all tuberous things, all ten- der bulbs, have been "safely garnered in, ere the winter storms begin." Dahlias are in their sandy nests ; gladioli repose in labelled paper bags ; tritomas, Galtonias are in dry, cool spots for winter safety. As we work under leafless trees and where noth- ing of green remains save the bright grass and the rich hues of pine and hemlock, the colors impris- oned within each bulb are sure to rise before me. I see again the rainbow of that wonderful exhibit of gladiolus as it was to be seen in Chicago last August; the matchless beauty of such blooms as Niagara and Panama. And I here set down a few notes on the gladiolus made last summer, both at home and away from it. And first let me say that the best recent hap- pening for the lover of this flower, and conse- quently, of course, the best thing for the grower 145 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN of gladiolus in this country, was the formation of the American Gladiolus Society. To all who take serious interest in this flower, I would recom- mend the small monthly publication, "The Mod- ern Gladiolus Grower," published at Calcium, New York, by Mr. Madison Cooper, himself an amateur; this paper is the organ of the American Gladiolus Society, and a very fountainhead of expert information in all matters relating to gladioli. Gladiolus Badenia, described in the first edition of this book, much grown for some years and con- sidered very fine, proved a failure, and for sub- stitutes in pure lavender there are really none. Louise, a much-praised lavender, has to me a rather muddy look; Herada, however, a very beautiful mauve, might be named as related to the pale violets, delightful of course when com- panioned in the garden by the deep-purple pe- tunia, the cool-pink annual aster. One might grow Herada with palest yellow snapdragon; or, a more subtle arrangement yet, plan to have it late against Salvia azurea, the junction of its stems with the ground masked by rippling mounds of Phlox drummondii lutea. All pale yellows and buffs, all rich purples, all blues [which are almost 146 THE NEWER GLADIOLI turquoise, rise to the mind as one thinks of the delicious pictures obtainable by combining such colors with either Herada or Rosella, the last de- scribed a few pages farther on. Orange Glory is another great beauty, not large, but wide, frilled, and in color Ridgway's salmon pink. This gladi- olus gives one an actual shock of pleasure. It shines out from every group of its kind. It glows with bright color. Now for the glorious pair Niagara and Panama. Niagara shall have the first word. Niagara is quite worthy of several descriptions. I therefore give first its commercial one, prefacing that by the fact that it has already secured three honors from horticultural societies, including one from the American Gladiolus Society. "In type," says its originator, "the variety resembles America, but the flowers appear to be somewhat larger, measur- ing four and one-half inches across. In color the flowers are a delightful cream shade, with the two lower inside petals or segments blending to ca- nary-yellow. The flower spike is very erect and stout and is wrapped with broad dark-green foliage." Now, to be exact in my own color description of this flower, Niagara is of the tone known as 147 pjtorarrr ubkaxt N. C. Statt Colk9» THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN Naples yellow (color chart, Jaune de Naples No. 2). Deep in its throat are lines of faintest lilac (color chart, Rose lilace No. 4). These, however, do not in the least interfere with the general effect of palest yellow or cream given by the whole fine flower. Two combinations of Niagara with other flow- ers flew to my mind, as I held this beauty in my hand. Phlox E. Danzanvilliers back of it, agera- tum Stella Gurney below and in front. The phlox can be made to hold its bloom for some time — the ageratum, as we know, is incessant. Again, nothing lovelier, thought I, than Niagara with salpiglossis of that dark velvety mahogany known as Faust; or below phlox Von Hochberg. The color at the base of the gladiolus, slight though it is, is very little lighter than the wine-purple of this phlox itself. Lovely, too, should Niagara be with all-lavender hardy asters, especially with that of the barren name of James Ganly. Panama, a sister of Niagara, was the third cap- tivator of the gladiolus show. I here declare, speaking with all possible calmness, that it is the softest and most charming tone of pronounced rose-pink I have ever noticed in a flower. It makes one think of roses, of the best roses, par- 148 THE NEWER GLADIOLI ticularly of Mrs. John Laing, and while I have never fancied the idea which obtains here and there of growing gladioh among roses, because of the leggy look of both roses and gladioli at their best, yet, if it must be done, Panama is the flower to place in our rose-beds ! The pink of Panama is that called mauve-rose (color chart, Rose malvace No. 2). Almost invisible markings there are, deep in its throat, of purple-carmine (Carmin pourpre No. 2). A setting of lyme grass, Elymus arenarius, is suggested, with perhaps, near by, a few blooms of the new decussata phlox of luscious pink, Ehzabeth Campbell. While the phlox is lighter in tone than the gladiolus, the pinks are of precisely the same type, for I have compared the living flowers. Verbena Dolores might fur- nish the base of this planting to charming ad- vantage. With the older gladioli. Peace, Dawn, and Afterglow, we have a sextet of what seemed to me the most beautiful of the newer gladioli, America excepted, but America is now established. It will be noticed, too, that I am far too modest to describe my own beautiful namesake, but I own to such a prejudice in favor of this flower and its brilliant and unmatchable flame-pink, that I could 149 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN not under the circumstances write dispassionately of it. The above-mentioned sextet, then, I would say, comprises several of the newer varieties of gladiolus whose interesting color and fine form fit them particularly for garden groupings of orig- inahty and charm. Of other fine varieties I shall presently speak, but these are really marvellous for beauty. One has but to see them to feel ideas for placing them, flocking softly to one's brain. Next year, oh, next year! It is impossible to overpraise the cool elegance of gladiolus Peace. Its flowers are milky-white (color chart, Blanc de lait No. 1) with well-defined nar- row stripes on the lower petals, far back in the throat, of rosy magenta (color chart. Magenta rougeatre No. 1). The variety is said to be un- surpassed for cutting, as the flowers keep well in water, and buds will open the entire length of the spike. Peace is surely the noblest white gladiolus. Its large flower, the slender violet markings so well within the throat that there is hardly an effect of color, gives one the impression of a pure white spike of bloom which had once looked upon an evening sky. Two gladioli with charmingly suggestive names 150 THE NEWER GLADIOLI are Dawn and Afterglow. Dawn, the lovely and poetic both in name and in look, has for its gen- eral color salmon -carmine (color chart, Carmin saumone No. 1). In my own tongue I should call this flower suffused with delicate coral-pink — the buds like the palest coral from Naples — these buds, too, gracefully drooping with a large softness peculiarly their own. Dawn — what sug- gestion in the name ! Dawn rising among well- estabhshed groups of the Japanese anemones Whirlwind or Beaute Parfaite; Dawn with the salmon-pink geranium Beaute Poitevine; Dawn in conjunction with Niagara — all these are sure to prove arrangements to charm one's eye in mid- summer. There is a salmon-pink balsam above which Dawn might be enchanting. Afterglow greatly caught my fancy. In general tone it is a flesh-pink (color chart. Rose carne No. 4), with throat markings, very apparent, lilac-purple (chart, Fuchsine No. 4). A rich salmon of generally the same tone in all its flowers would be my own description of it. Taconic I had opportunity to observe closely last August; its general color is mauve-rose (Rose malvace No. 2), though the flakes of white very finely distributed over the prevailing tone make 151 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN it dijQBcult to exactly place the color. Its mark- ings are of carmine-purple (Pourpre carmine No. 3), slim, narrow lines. The effect of the flower was of a beautiful warm pink flaked and feath- ered with white, as in a Breeder tulip; the mark- ings, however, much more delicate. Philadelphia and Evolution come next to mind; the former in color mauve-rose (chart, Rose mal- vace No. 1), clear pale rose-pink tone, fine form, a wide, large flower with sharp, narrow markings in the throat, of carmine-purple (chart, Pourpre carmine No. 3). Evolution's prevaihng tone is mauve-rose (chart. Rose malvace No. 1, flaked with No. 4 on the same plate, and with dark old- rose — chart, Rose brule No. 3). The anthers of this pair of lovely gladioli, with their pale-pink tones — the anthers are of the shade called bluish lilac (Lilas bleuatre No. 1) — give genuine distinc- tion to these flowers. Gladiolus Rosella is a lovely thing. In its main tone carmine-purple (chart, Pourpre car- mine No. 1, with its throat markings No. 3 on the same plate), the effect is of a huge flower of rich orchid-like pink, very beautiful, a very open, spreading flower. Rosella above ageratum Stella Gurney cannot fail to be a success in color plant- 152 THE NEWER GLADIOLI ings; Rosella below Salvia azurea, with the an- nual pink mallow near by; and, last, Rosella with Baron Hulot, that small-flowered but ever-needed gladiolus of the color known as bishop's violet (chart, Violet eveque No. 4). I am myself minded to grow Baron Hulot in the midst of ageratum Stella Gurney — precisely as one lets a colony of tulips appear above forget-me-not; and Baron Hulot would be also most perfect among the fine creamy flowers of chrysanthemum Garza. With a few very short descriptions I have done. Senator Volland is an interesting flower, the gen- eral tone of its petals bright violet (chart, Violet de campanule No. 1). Blotches of amaranth (chart, Amarante No. 4), with yellow-white spaces below these, occur on the inferior petals, with a lovely mottling of the amaranth on these lower petals as well. "Bright violet" does not describe the color of this flower to me as well as pale cool lavender, with richer lavender or purple on the throat, flakes of a true cream color upon the purple. Canary-bird, with its clear light yellow (no visible markings of any other color), is most charming in combination with Senator Volland. And the Senator again might stand to great ad- vantage before tall groups of Physostegia Virginica, 153 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN var. rosea, the soft rosy false dragon's-head. The color of Canary-bird on the chart is sulphur-yel- low (Jaune soufre No. 1). Isaac Buchanan may not be a new gladiolus but it was new to me — a lemon-flaked soft pink, the flakes giving a charming effect. The flower is not large, but rare in color, and above Phlox Drummondii, var. lutea, an interesting effect should be got. Snowbird is a lovely white with pinkish- violet slender markings in the throat; La Luna, a soft creamy white with a very clearly defined marking of richest Pompeiian red on the throat; California, a pinkish lavender gladiolus, is an ex- cellent color for use with America; Princess Al- tiere, a very large pure white with royal-purple markings on the lower petals; and Independence, a magnificent salmon-pink, very light in tone, re- minding me in a general way of the fine old Wil- liam Falconer, but far and away better in type — every gladiolus named here is to me worth getting and growing. I emphatically advise the buying of small quan- tities of these bulbs as a starter, as one would with fine tulips; the careful labelling, staking, comparing with other flowers differing in form, color, and habit but blooming simultaneously; and, 154 THE NEWER GLADIOLI most necessary of all, the note-making in one's little book — that httle book which should never be in the house when the gardener is in the garden ! I was greatly interested to learn that florists pre- fer for cutting in some cases, the gladiolus whose stems are allowed to bend and twist as they bloom. A hint of this kind may be valuable for some of us who grow this superb flower mainly to put about our houses. It is easy to see the agreeable variety of line afforded for such purposes by the gladiolus which has not been strictly staked. On going over what has been said, I marvel at my attempt to write on the glories of this special flower. I have, in the first place, left out so many beauties, such for instance as Sulphur King, Mrs. Frank Pendleton, Jr. (bright rose-pink, a little deeper toward centre of the flower, the lower petals blotched with carmine — so remarkable that a connoisseur writes of it: "Mrs. Pendleton is in bloom, has a five-foot stalk with twenty flowers and a smaller offshoot with twelve; it is simply magnificent"), William Falconer, America, Kunderd's Glory — there are dozens which should come into any writing in connection with this flower. No flower of the garden proves more irre- 155 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN sistible to me than this. Its lovely perpendicular line first, lilylike, irislike; then its truly pris- matic range of exquisite color. No wonder that hybridizers in Holland, France, Germany, Great Britain, and this country have been earnestly working now for years upon so beautiful a sub- ject, or that amateur hybridizers are beginning to crop out in our own land. The cultivation of the gladiolus is so exceed- ingly simple; the results so wonderfully reward- ing; the color effects so certain of accomplish- ment with flowers which come as true to type and color as these; there is everything to praise in this flower, no check to the imagination when forming one's summer plans with lists of it by one's side. Gardens of enchantment might easily be created by the careful use of two annuals such as dark heliotrope, ageratum Stella Gurney, and the lavender, cool, pink, and palest-yellow gladi- olus, mentioned in these pages. A mistake of judgment would be almost impossible with these materials in hand. 156 XII MIDSUMMER POMPS 'Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on. Soon will the musk carnations break and swell, Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon, Sweet-William with his homely cottage smell. And stocks in fragrant blow; Roses that down the alleys shine afar. And open, jasmine-mufl3ed lattices. And groups under the dreaming garden-trees, And the full moon, and the white evening star." — IVIatthew Aknold. XII MIDSUMMER POMPS AS I sat in my garden one fine evening in late June ^ of the year just gone, my eye wandered over near-by heads of pale-pink peonies, and beyond other white ones, to a distant corner where a rather unusual color effect had appeared. At the back of this flower group was a tall dark-blue del- phinium, name unknown; to the right stood the charming one La France, its round flowerets set thickly and evenly up the stem, their general tone a pale pinkish-mauve. Directly below La France the fingered stems of the lovely perennial foxglove. Digitalis ambigua, were to be seen. Be- side the buff foxglove masses of the purple-blue Campanula persicifoliay erect and delicate, had place, and the foremost flowers of the group were gay single pyrethrums, with a high hght in the presence of a few of the common white daisies. In the warm evening light the flowers seemed to take on a new aspect. The blue of the tall lark- spur spires had acquired a translucent quahty; 159 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN the little Annchen Mueller roses set thick against opening gypsophila glowed like rubies; the great white peonies flushed in the setting sun till one might fancy that Festiva maxima had magically become that beauty of beauties in peonies, Ma- dame Emile Galle. A few particularly fine delphiniums have this year attained special perfection in the garden, in better shades of light blue than any before seen here, except perhaps for the blue of the old fa- vorite Cantab and the fine Madame Violet Geslin which a year ago was a revelation. La France, elsewhere described, gave great delight. Kelway's Lovely was remarkable for its overlaid petals of palest blue and palest lavender. The beauteous Persimmon, too, was there; its color so truly sky-blue that when a flower was held against the heavenly canopy of a fine summer's day, it seemed to disappear, to melt into its own hue. One could wish that handsome spring-blooming thing, muscari Heavenly Blue, relieved of its present ill-fitting name and the pretty title bestowed in- stead upon delphinium Persimmon. This it in very truth describes. One of those discerning friends who send de- tails of flowers seen afar off, wrote from England 160 DELPHINIUM LA FRANCE, CAMPANULA PERSICIFOLIA. DIGITALIS AMBIGUA AND PYRETHRUM MIDSUMMER POMPS the first news of the two delphiniums shown facing page 164; these were prize-winning flowers at the Holland House show of 1913, and first shown in 1908. On the left is a marvellous spike of palest sky-blue and lavender Statuaire Rude. The enormous size of the flowerets and the man- ner in which they range themselves loosely up the stem, joined to a rare beauty in soft color tones, give this delphinium a peculiar distinction. In the Alake, at the right of illustration, petals of the richest blue are overlaid by others of richest vio- let, affording an effect entirely unique and entirely sumptuous: delightful to record, the flower is named for an Indian potentate ! The celebrated "what" that's in a name never troubles me so much as in this matter of flower nomenclature. Most women gardeners who are readers, too, are sensitive to the fitness of flower names. I have been ever averse to the naming of flowers for in- dividuals, unless the individual so honored shall have rendered some service to horticulture. In the terminations "Willmotti," *'Sargentii," and other such, w^e rejoice; similarly in "nigella Miss Jekyll," "peony Baroness Schroeder"; these bring most properly and with a certain mental stimulus to our recollection those whose gardens, whose 161 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN scientific knowledge, or whose writings have been of world-wide value to the gardening public. Mr. E. V. Lucas has a nice paragraph on rose names: "Most often it happens that the name is ugly. ... A rose should have a name as im- mortal as itself. The Earl of Penzance knew this when he called his sweetbriars after Scott's hero- ines. Shakespeare, so far as England is con- cerned, might give names to all our new roses." Do seedsmen name flowers for good customers ? I mightily fear it ! Names, to be perfection, should first carry some descriptive quality, and next they should be words of beauty. Many ex- amples might be given: Dawn, most aptly fit for the lovely pale-pink gladiolus which it adorns; Capri (a name, of course, to conjure with), a true felicity as a name for a delphinium of a ravishing tone of sky-blue; Eyebright, for that wondrous daffodil with scarlet centre; Lady Gay, the hap- piest hit in names for that sweet little rose which will dance anywhere in the sun and wind of June. A sight most lovely is, of a summer's evening, to see Delphinium Moerheimi lifting its white spires of flowers against a green background of shrub- bery with a blue mist of sea-holly below it, and in the foreground, rising from gypsophila masses, 162 MIDSUMMER POMPS other spires of richest rose-pink hollyhock. White and lavender phloxes in the middle distance add to the charm of this picture. Tapis Blanc, and Antonin Mercie, and the little dark balls of box- trees, and the blooming standard Conrad F. Meyer roses with their formal flavor, are agreeable acces- sories, really enhancing the beauty of the freer flower masses. As each summer appears and waxes, I think I have found the companion for sea-holly. One year it was phlox Coquelicot or its brilliant brother R. P. Struthers; another year phlox Pantheon was my favorite for the honor; while last year I was entirely captivated by the effect of the an- nual Statice bonduelli, primrose or canary-yellow, with the blue-gray eryngium. But this season a large group of the sea-hollies chanced to bloom beside another group of pentstemon, and a happy alliance it was, quite the happiest of all. The brilliant color of the pentstemon, Pentstemon bar- batus Torreyii, found its perfect concomitant in the cloudy blues of the eryngium, and the two to- gether formed a satisfying spectacle. This pent- stemon, not one of the newer hybrids, I also liked for use in the house, especially when rising from bowlfuls of the creamy heads of Hydrangea 163 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN arhorescens; the effect, a severe contrast, was good. The pentstemon is a trifle too near scarlet to be welcome in my garden — it must remain without the gate; but in gayer gardens than mine it should always have place. Lovely it would surely be above mounds of cream- white zinnias in full bloom with a sweet pea like Barbara rising back of the pentstemon. Sea-holly ! I could sing its praises for pages ! Sea-holly has never seemed to me to find its per- fect companion for cutting until, in the trial gar- den, acquaintance was luckily made with the an- nual Statice sinuata bonduelli. Statice incana has here been known and loved; Statice latifolia, that beautiful violet statice which ladies buy on Edin- burgh streets; but Statice bonduelli, with its deli- cate yellow blooms, became in a day a prime favor- ite. The loveliness of its foot-high branching stems covered with tiny canary-yellow flowers, when cut and held against the bluish sea-holly, can hardly be imagined. Gypsophila paniculata, the double variety, is good with the two, but possibly the pair are best alone. For out-of-door effect the statice should not be overlooked; though its stems are rather sparse, its leaves entirely basal, it is nevertheless a treasure, and a charming result 164 '"V f r ,^' DELPHINIUMS THE ALAKE AND STATUAIRE RUDE MIDSUMMER POMPS occurs when the later mauve variety blooms, with many heads of a new pale-yellow centaurea gently forcing their way to the sun through the tiny lavender statice blossoms. Gladiolus primulinus hybrids are a delight to the "garden soul." Exquisite soft tones of pale yellow with now and again some spikes of a pale flame-pink, they are most lovely as they grow, while for cutting, used with Statice honduelli and the double gypsophila, nothing could be more attractive. Add to your arrangement of these flowers a cluster of that enchanting sweet pea, Sterling Stent, you shall rejoice in what you have created. Sterling Stent! I betray a valuable gardening secret when I tell of him. His color, according to the French chart, is Laque de Ga- rance from 1 to 4 with occasional tones of Rouge peche 4. Beautiful beyond description is he, and he fadeth not in sun ! And now a word concerning a certain double rose-colored annual poppy, a poppy which has become a rose-pink essential to this garden. One of Sutton's hollyhocks, a double pink of the exact tone of these poppies (chart, all shades of Rose Nilsson), has made a picture here and there, lifting its tall stems set with rich pink bosses of rosy 165 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN petals above the rounding gypsophilas in whose lacy masses some poppies softly bloom. So like are the poppies to the individual hollyhock flowers that it is as if some of the former had whimsically decided to grow along a hollyhock stalk. If one were to try for this effect, a new gladiolus, Display, should be freely used within the range of vision here; and the beauteous sea-holly would again prove its high garden value if groups should be set in this picture. Among the pink poppies I very much fancy the white platycodon, P. grandi- florum album; the pearly tone of these flowers charming with the gay poppy-blooms, and the platycodon's smooth pointed cups affording an interesting contrast to the other's soft fulness of fringed silk. Gladiolus Display among sea-holly could not but be excellently effective. It is a gladiolus of rare beauty. Let us not pass by the Oriental poppy in our consideration of the flowers of the poppy tribe. In the latitude of Boston the fresh pale-green tufts of the former may be discovered in early April, a heartening and lovely sight as the last snows of winter are vanishing before the spring sun. These have formed in the previous autumn, but this perennial has a constitution to withstand 166 MIDSUMMER POMPS the severest of winters. Here is a flower which does well in any good garden soil, though sunlight is its prime necessity. Equally vital to its well- doing is its transplanting when dormant in August or September, or so I used to think. I know now, after some experimenting, that the Oriental poppy can be safely moved in spring as well. Until two years ago, when some of the varieties of this flower of recent introduction were revealed to me, I was ignorant of the development of the flower. "Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken." Princess Victoria Louise, the huge bloom of a delicious rosy-salmon hue, was a sensation. One who enjoys the delicate suggestion of thin flame should stand before this flower transported with delight. And now the list of Bertrand H. Farr, of Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, gives us no less than thirty varieties of Oriental poppies in only five of which the word "scarlet" enters into the descriptions. All the rest verge upon the salmon, apricot, amaranth, and deep-mulberry shades. The lighter colors of these newer poppies are, as has been suggested, very like those of the Shirley poppy, and how remarkable to find in the larger, 167 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN stronger, and more enduring flowers the charming color characteristics of that poppy, whose one defect is its ephemeral quality! From a color-plate in the list of the plantsman just mentioned a very beautiful combination of poppies should be got by using the rich amaranth Mahony, described as "deep mahogany-maroon," but which I should call a blackish mulberry, with Rose Queen, a fine satiny rose-pink. The revolu- tion in color in these poppies transforms them at once into subjects of the greatest interest for the formal or informal garden, the garden which pre- cludes the use of scarlet, orange, or any deep yellow. The rich darkness of Mahony would be a heavenly sight with the Dropmore anchusa ris- ing back of it, but for real nobility of effect the two should be used alone. Some plants seem a bit dull in their beginnings; not so with this, for from the first the lovely form and curve of each leaf is apparent, aside from the fresh yellow-green of the leaf -group. To fill the wide spaces of earth which should occur between plants destined for so rapid and so large a growth, tulips are suggested; to follow the poppy bloom and act again as a ground cover, seed of salpi- glossis sown early, or of tall marigold, whose foli- 168 MIDSUMMER POMPS age and bloom will in August and September seem to be the only inhabitants of this part of the border or the garden. If the objection be raised that the poppy leaves must shade such seeds in May and June, I reply that it is easy so to stake aside a leaf or two of the poppy in many places as to allow the sun full access to the little seedlings of annuals. Shall I be forgiven for returning to the subject of sea-lavenders, or statices, for a moment ? Seeds of several varieties started under glass not only made a pretty effect in rows but became a ne- cessity for cutting. The variety honduelli already mentioned was tried for the first time, taken on faith and the word of Sutton & Sons. It found favor at once. Statice sinuata, mauve, came true to its name, bearing pale-mauve flowers in what might be called tiny boughs or branches about a foot from the ground. Statice sinuata Mauve proved to be of many lovely tones of pale mauve, bluish mauve, and cream-white. But, oh, the pale-yel- low variety, S. sinuata honduelli, again ! In this we have almost a primrose-yellow Gypsophila pa- niculata for the making delicate of our bowls and jars of July flowers. One should see it with sea- holly. On its fitness for use with Gladiolus primu- THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN linus hybrids I have already dwelt; indeed, there is hardly one flower whose beauty it might not enhance. And then — amusing to me who dislike dried flowers for decorative uses — the texture of all these statices is like that of tissue-paper. Draw the finger lightly across their flower clusters when in full bloom and hear the soft rustle of them ! Statice bonduelli against brown-seeding gypsophila, the single, with the great orange lily, Lilium superbum, is exceedingly good in effect because of the yellow-green of the statice and of the lily-buds. The decorative value of seeds ripe, but not too ripe, is seldom dwelt upon, but I can assure the reader that the three things mentioned make together a most lovely planting for early August and are equally beautiful when cut. It may be of interest to set down here a brief account of trials of some newer gladioli, only of those which made themselves uncommonly wel- come. In Display, mentioned above as a fine neighbor for the rose-colored poppy, I noticed a flower of very beautiful form — a broad, well- opened flower of most decided character and good looks; on its outer petals is a suffusion of Rose begonia No. 1, deepening toward the outer edges to Rose vieux No. 2. The anthers bore a dis- 170 MIDSUMMER POMPS tinct lavender tone, and a fine cream-white on the lower petals of the gladiolus connected the darker shades of rose above and below it. The marvellous Mrs. Frank Pendleton I also saw a year since for the first time, and this was an experience apart. The flower, a broad, finely opened one of white, carried petals all flushed to- ward the tips with Rose malvace; the markings of lower petals were of extraordinary richness and depth of color. In chart colors the nearest to this tone was Rouge carombier No. 4, but the plate was really neither dark nor velvety enough. Rouge Andrinople No. 1 is the tone of these large oval markings. Mrs. Pendleton is a gladi- olus in a thousand, and its American origin should be a matter for pride to all in this country who cherish their gardens. The longer I garden, the more deeply do I prize all flowers in tones of violet or deep, rich purple. We need more such as foils for paler colors, yes, and for richer too. The Buddleia is a garden godsend and, pleasant to record, is rapidly becom- ing better known. The grace of its habit, the charming lavenders and purples of its flowery racemes, not to mention its gray-green foliage and its absolutely constant bloom make it already of 171 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN value high and wide. At the thought of the vio- let gladioli the vision of those enchanting wreaths of lavender held out from every Buddleia plant floats before my too imaginative eye. The illus- tration shows a group of Buddleias blooming above gladiolus America, which in its turn is grown among hardy French chrysanthemums partly for support from the latter, partly for succession of bloom in the trial garden. Phoebus, Nuage, Abyssine, Colibri, and Satel- lite are the lavender or violet flowers I would now name. The first, possessed of long, narrow petals, whose general tone is of Violet de campanule No. 2, has markings on the inferior petals of Violet vineux No. 3. These markings are long, pointed blotches terminating in spaces of tenderest creamy yellow; the whole a very handsome flower of the hooded type. In Nuage the throat markings are of Violet rougeatre No. 4, turning below to Violet petunia No. 3; the petals are of a grayish lavender, Violet franc No. 1. Abyssine is a small gladiolus whose general tone is Violet prune No. 4; a flower one would not be without, so velvet-soft, so won- derful in color. Baron Hulot has long been indis- pensable to us all; Abyssine ranks with Baron Hulot. 172 BUDDLEIA VARIABILIS MAGNIFICA, WHITE ZINNIA BELOW MIDSUMMER POMPS Colibri is a flower of many lovely tones of mauve and violet, not large but in color unique. On its three inner petals are narrow central mark- ings of yellowish cream. The dark edges of the petals are of Violet pourpre No. 1 ; a lighter tone is seen toward the centre, though all is so veined and touched with mauve and violet as to be difficult to describe. Satellite is the last of this dark-hued list. Here the general tone is Violet prune No. 4 relieved by tones of Amarante in all its shades in the chart. Two perfectly rounded lower petals of Violet pen- see No. 4 give an astonishing beauty to the flower. In my notes concerning it I find this entry: "No gladiolus to compare with this," coupled with an admonition to myself to grow it with delphinium Mrs. J. S. Brunton, or, for a richer effect, among or beyond the tall phlox GoHath. For those who would know accurately the color of the delphin- ium just mentioned, I may add that the first two shades of Bleu de cobalte factice exactly represent its petal colors, while its eye is white tinged with canary-yellow and palest lavender. Yet another gladiolus, the last; and this is of those lasts which shall be firsts, for it is a giant in size of flower and height of stem — a superb 173 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN addition to the ranks of gladioli. London is its imposing name. In color almost the counterpart of America, its cool pink eminently fits it for use with the beautiful lavender gladiolus Badenia. The flowers of the two are of almost equal size, measuring four inches on each side of the triangle made by the petals; and they are quite ravishing together. Badenia, the purple verbena Dolores, and that charming hardy phlox Braga used to- gether in a garden should make a most happy color arrangement. Gladiolus Satellite, too, is exceedingly good with phlox Goliath. I spoke just now of verbena Dolores. To be explicit as to its color, it has over its fine trusses or panicles of bloom the darker shades of Bleu d'aniline, but the flower is much darker than No. 4 of this shade, and has that velvety texture which gives the dark verbenas a richness possessed only by the darkest snapdragons. In the trial garden a few new hardy phloxes as- serted themselves last year: two or three dozen planted in the spring of the year before rose in their might the second season and sent forth glo- rious trusses of flowers to proclaim their presence. A first cousin in color to the lovely Elizabeth Campbell, and very beautiful with it, is Rhyn- 174 MIDSUMMER POMPS strom, a recent acquaintance. Rhynstrom has a wonderfully large floweret of a delicious pink; per- fect it is before phlox Pantheon, as it is dwarf and of a tone of rose to positively accentuate the loveliness of the taller of the two. Baron von Dedem has decidedly the most dazzling hue of all phloxes. Its opening flowers are nearly if not quite as brilliant as Coquelicot in full bloom, and the expanse of its great blossoms makes it in the garden a far more telling phlox than the latter. Widar and Braga, two beauties in themselves, lend themselves well to use as foregrounds for the taller lavender phloxes E. Danzanvilliers and Antonin Mercie, again needing to complete the picture that good verbena Dolores. Phlox Braga is en- trancing with ageratum Stella Gurney and with the same humble but most useful annual, Widar, discreetly used, may afford an effect as subtle as it is lovely. The recent vogue of lavender in all sorts of feminine accessories is known to us all. There is in this hue a certain refinement, a charm, which makes it a special favorite for the woman no longer young. Can it be, I wonder, that the sug- gestion is taken unconsciously from Nature's own use of the tone in the waning of summer, from 175 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN those flowers which embroider the roadsides with lavender-purple in September — aster, ironweed, the tall liatris? Be this or not a foolish fancy, there is no flower of more value and of greater beauty in the September garden than the Bud- dleia. It is at every stage of growth most lovely, and in its fulness of bloom a thing to marvel at. For an autumn picture, set the variety known as Magnifica back of phlox Antonin Mercie (in its second bloom, all first flowers having been cut immediately upon passing), with masses of green- white zinnias also in the foreground. Phlox Jeanne d'Arc, the tall late white, creates a beau- tiful background for these Buddleias, the graceful lavender plumes of the latter very delicate against the round white mounds of the phlox trusses. Mr. E. H. Wilson, an authority upon Buddleias as well as upon all other Chinese plants, shrubs, and trees, suggests the planting of Sorbaria arborea and its varieties by the brook or pond side in com- bination with Buddleia. "The effect is every- thing the most fastidious could wish for." Also in mid-September, a great group of flow- ers then in perfection in the trial garden gave ex- cellent suggestion for a planned planting. This, altogether a happening in arrangement, was seen 176 MIDSUMMER POMPS against a trellis covered with leaves of the vine. Close against the green stood in slender dignity a group of blooming Ilclianthus orgyalis. Miss Mellish, ten feet tall, its blooms of clear yellow shining against the upper blue. Below the Helian- thus, Sutton's Dwarf Primrose sunflower raised its pale-3"ellow heads with dark-brown centres, the yellow-green leaves forming a spreading back- ground for tall white zinnias arrayed in groups below. The semi-dwarf lavender phlox Antonin Mercie, with fragrant creamy-white Acidanthera hi- color before it, made the foreground of this picture, and those who would have tones in flowers ranging from pure chrome-yellow through primrose to lav- ender and cream-white will do well to plan this simply made and satisfying group. Introduce a few hardy asters such as James Ganly, with a bit of low-growing verbena Dolores in the extreme foreground, and a delicacy of form and a rich color accent, too, are at once added to such a scheme as this. To return to midsummer flowers — three brief suggestions and I have done. A rich royal-purple Antirrhinum, Purple King by name, was excellent when cut, with Statice bonduclli; the new giants of double zinnias, rose-colored ones only, were 177 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN permitted to show their stout heads among the early-flowering white cosmos, the dwarf variety; and more lovely even than these was the picture before touched upon of pearly-white platycodon with fluffy heads of the double rose-pink poppy encompassing it about. These arrangements may strike the expert flower gardener as too common- place to be entertained. I offer them as points of departure and already think with satisfaction of the loveliness that may spring from them in better hands than mine. XIII GARDEN NOTES IN 1921 Binding all is the rich thread of the seasons, with its many-coloured strands; and, backing all, the increasing knowledge of Nature and her ways, that revolving wheel of beauty growmg ever more complex and yet more clear, more splendid. — Constance Holme, "The Splendid Fairing." XIII GARDEN NOTES IN 1921 1ET me preface these notes with some hints on ■^ flower arrangement derived from a particu- larly good source. About two years ago certain members of the Woman's National Farm and Garden Association lent their houses in Boston and New York for a lecture by Mr. B. F. Letson, of a florist's firm in the first-named city. If I am not wrong, this was the first time that Mr. Letson, a recognized authority in such matters, had ever spoken in public or demonstrated his ways of ar- ranging flowers, though we had all known him as a master of his art. So much has been said since these talks concerning Mr. Letson's idea that it seems not out of place to give a resume of these. Mr. Letson does not advocate the use of shears for cutting the flowers. He would use a sharp knife, make a long slanting cut and split the stem for some distance. In this way a greater surface is offered for drawing water into the stems and foliage. A dull knife or dull shears and a cut 181 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN straight across tears the cells and clogs up the en- trance for water. All flowers treated in the way just described will far outlast those treated other- wise. Heliotrope, which is a subject given to quick wilting without recovery, will behave very well if the stems are first plunged into hot water (as hot as the hand will bear) for ten minutes. Many other flowers, especially all having a woody tissue, like dahlias, poppies, mignonette, etc., act favorably after this treatment. For flowers with a succulent stem this treatment will not do; cold water is sufficient. Flowers with hard- wooded stems, shrubs, say lilacs, should have the bark peeled and rolled back for a few inches; the bare stem is then split and immersed in boiling water for ten minutes, whereupon the w^hole stem is put into the vase containing cold water. Fresh roses that have for some reason wilted can be brought back very easily by throwing them into a tub of cold water for an hour or more. They come out then very fresh. In severe weather flowers received in the store from the greenhouse or by a customer from the store should not be un- packed for a few hours. They should be left un- touched in the box and put into a cool room, where the temperature in the box will be given a 182 GARDEN NOTES IN 1921 chance to cool slowly. Then they should be treated as mentioned above, each kind accordingly. To restore the freshness of violets after they have been worn, hold the flowers upside down under the faucet, let the water run through them for three to five minutes, then roll in paper and put the stems up to the necks into fresh water for a few hours. The speaker then demonstrated in a general way how to arrange flowers in vases and other con- tainers. He laid great stress upon the importance of having containers not only of appropriate and artistic designs but also of the right proportion with regard to height and width. A graceful and satisfactory effect can be produced best with very few flowers. Mr. Letson likes to use the green of box for a foundation in a vase or basket. This green is not to show above the rim; it is simply there to stick the flowers into and to steady them. No other foliage but that belonging to the flower should ever be used. Mr. Letson is absolutely against the indiscriminate use of all kinds of rib- bons in the arranging of flowers in vases, baskets, or otherwise. Here or there a bow of ribbon may be advisable, but never on the handle of a basket nor around the neck of a vase. He referred to re- 183 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN cent visits to New York and other places where he had seen the much beribboned hydrangeas and other plants, and said that there might be uses for ribbon, but it was not on a well-grown, well- flowered plant. When he does use ribbon, it is of the more showy type, and not crape or silk. Color arrangements were mentioned, and lavender and orange, such as lavender sweet peas and calendulas, were suggested. The scattering of greenery on tables after flowers had been ar- ranged was roundly denounced as utterly uncalled for and out of place. The speaker then closed with a demonstration of arrangement of narcissi. The paragraphs above are a compilation from reports in The Florists'' Exchange and The Florists' Review. They are full of suggestion and sound advice for amateurs as well as for professionals — for the woman in her house as well as for the woman florist. Where box green is not obtain- able, other foliage green may be substituted. I use twigs, young twigs of bush honeysuckle often in steadying flowers in bowls or tall opaque vases; and I take this because it grows at hand, and is the most convenient thing to get. I crumple the twigs with the leaves on them and press this into the jars or bowls. Or often in broad and shallow 184 GARDEN NOTES IN 1921 receptacles, which compel the use of two or three Mason jars full of water for gladioli, peonies, and so on, I use these same twigs to stuff the space be- tween the jars and the edges or sides of a large, low basket. They are never seen, yet the ar- rangement is kept firm in this way, even if carried for a distance. March 25, 1921. On October 22 of last year there was shipped by express from a town in Nottinghamshire, Eng- land, a small collection of fine daffodils, fourteen in all. These should have reached me in late No- vember, allowing for all delays, but December passed, and on January 17 arrived upon a Ten- nessee mountain top a small box containing the bulbs. Some of them seemed sound, a few were hollow and worthless, one had vanished. Gar- denless, I looked about to see who would give me bulbous hospitality for the winter. Two kind members of the Garden Club of Lookout Moun- tain offered the needed space. After some two months on ships and trains these were consigned to earth with many fears and hopes, with the re- sult that to-day, March 25, 1921, three beauties of daffodils are blooming in Tennessee, a State 185 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN which may not have seen these before. Three are before me as I write: Elvira, Noble, and Chal- lenger. And now, in trying to describe them, how I long for my color-charts which are miles away. Elvira's starry cream-white perianth measures three inches across, its pale straw-yellow trumpet is one inch in length and has edges more delignt- fuUy frilled than any daffodil I have yet seen. The perianth here is like a six-pointed star be- cause of the overlapping of its segments; the effect is lovely. Noble, a magnificent flower, stands from the ground twelve inches, and its giant spread across the perianth is as much as four inches. The perianth, each segment almost apart from its neighbor or with an effect of distinctness because of the slight reflexing of each one, has a superb appearance and forms the setting for a rich chrome-yellow trumpet one inch long with rather broadly frilled edges. Superb is not too strong a term to apply to this flower. In my fear lest the warm weather, which brought the bulbs to the budding stage, might change to cold and even frosty nights, I brought a bud of each inside to develop in water, leaving a duplicate on each plant to watch the behavior in the two atmospheres. The difference is striking, those in the house never 186 GARDEN NOTES IN 1921 reaching the height of general size of the dwellers in the open. The indoor flower of Noble is only two-thirds the size of its naturally developing companion. Challenger, of which I had often heard, stands now before me. What a glory in daffodils is this, and what a sensation it must have made when first show^n. The segments of its cream-white petals are distinctly reflexed; its slender trumpet has a length greater, I believe, than any I have ever before seen in daffodils — two inches. Im- agine this, if you can; with a bold frill at the low- est diameter of the perianth three and a half inches; and of the trumpet at the lower edge, one and one-quarter inches. In proportion to its length this trumpet is excessively slender — its color a silvery yellow — a beautiful pale tone. The stem of my flower is ten inches in height, but I believe Challenger under entirely favorable con- ditions grows much tafler than this. May 1, 1921. Not one of the newer shrubs, those offered to the American public only within the last ten or fifteen years, not one can be more worth buying for the garden large or small, than the Viburnum 187 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN from Korea, Viburnum carlesii. It is hard to de- scribe the beauty of this least known of the Vi- burnums. Those who Hke Viburnum plicatum and the Japanese variety of the same family will find here a great difference between their old favorites and this newcomer; the important differ- ence being one of richness in texture of the flowers, of color of buds, and in scent. In fact, Vibur- num carlesii has a fragrance not surpassed in delicious quality by any flower that I know. The lovely rose-pink buds of this shrub, too, appearing in the cluster with the pure-white flowers, are noticeably handsome. Viburnum carlesii grows to four or five feet, and is a wonderfully fine sub- ject for the small garden, and for the large no less. Plumbago capensis is of the loveliest tone of fair, pale lavender. The flowers, though growing at the ends of branching stems, recall at once the flowers of Phlox divaricata canadensis. The habit of growth, the spare but handsome clusters of ovate leaves set alternately along the strong, light stems, and the beautiful racemes of slender buds in which each branch ends, combine to make this plumbago a flower of incredible distinction. The slender tubular throat of each floret, clear lavender throughout, adds a light charm, and the 188 GARDEN NOTES IN 1921 length of the blooming period must be remarkable, since when the lowest part of the raceme is in full flower, all upper buds are still pale-lavender points; the effect always being of a large Phlox-like head of bloom, though, as I said before, of a grace and lightness unattained by any ordinary Phlox. On that fortunate day when I had my first delectable sight of Plumbago cayensis I was shown, in a charming hillside garden, which everywhere bore the imprint of its owner's personal care, a so- called red valerian, a flower unknown here and but little known in England, growing only on the Isle of Wight. Though a so-called red, it is really a deep and telling rose-pink. The height of the plant is not so great by half as of the white vari- ety seen in gardens old and new, nor is the scent as pronounced as in the old form, but the plant itself is an object of beauty and affords an uncom- monly interesting subject for the border. May 15, 1921. This spring I have discovered in the borders here a lovely little contemporary and running mate of the Myosotis. It is Anchusa myosotidi- flora, one of the boldest and most eager-looking small flowers that I know. The bloom, precisely 189 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN like that of the Forget-me-not, is held well above the flat-lying large green leaves, and is of Ridg- way's color, called Forget-me-not Blue, but much stronger in tone. The color in the French Chart is 212-1, and this plate absolutely represents the hue of the flower. These lovely blue things are blooming in a narrow border with Dicentra eximia, mauve (plants given me by Mrs. Walter Brew- ster, of Lake Forest), while tulip, John Ruskin flowers above them — a very interesting, indeed subtle, combination of color. This morning the terrific frost, which most of us had feared would follow the abnormally warm spring, has caused these tulips to bend over the low flowers — a plaintive sight to the garden's owner. The blue Anchusa seems not to have felt the cold. Barr's Alpine Forget-me-not is one of the best blues in all flowers: R. Forget-me-not Blue, French Chart 212-1. It is far finer in color than the Sutton's Myosotis, either Perfection or Royal Blue; for it is true blue, but deeper. I find in the French Chart no plate to correspond with the color of these last-mentioned flowers. In Ridg- way their color is Light Forget-me-not Blue. In a little bowl before me are these three blue things, the May-flowering Anchusa and the two 190 GARDEN NOTES IN 1921 Myosotises of Barr and Sutton, but beside these is an entirely new and most beautiful small an- nual flower — new to me, that is — Cynoglossum. This was started from seed in the garden borders last spring. All that developed by October were fine mounds of gray-green leaves of an unusually interesting form. Therefore, as the flower was said to be of uncommon charm, the plants were given to a florist, and this week they have been returned to me in full bloom. But what a change ! Instead of the solid, low-growing plants with large leaves, here are plants in pots, a foot tall, with very few leaves, spare, thin, pale green, up the tall stems, and those stems topped by spraying clusters, or rather little racemes, of the most charming blue flowers imaginable. They are al- most indistinguishable from the Myosotis, but much fuller flowering — and the flowers have no yellow centres like the Myosotis; also they are of a richer blue. What a plant to use in spring with other flowers, if one only knew what it would really do with us; its luxuriant bloom — compared with that of the Myosotis — and its pleasant height would give it great value for composition. I shall proceed to set these plants out-of-doors and see how long they last in flower. 191 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN Peake, in his delightful little handbook, men- tions as the only blue-flowering Cynoglossum the variety pidum or creticum, from southern Europe, and calls it a hardy biennial. Bailey seems to scorn the whole tribe with such words as tall, coarse, weedy, but adds: "A new plant, C. furcatum, has recently been introduced. It is a hairy herb, one to three feet high, with large leaves and blue flowers in clusters as in forget-me-not." This comes from India and flowers in June. All the Cynoglossums are of the Borage family and their common name is Hound's Tongue. Speaking of blue flowers, a bit of the pleasure of quoting a paragraph from Mrs. Cran's "The Garden of Ignorance" will not be denied me: "A child set me a problem for a color picture last autumn. We were talking garden talk. I said I was planning pretty colors to plant now, ready for springtime, and I went on rashly: *Tell me the prettiest thing you ever saw in a garden and I will try to make it for you to see next April.' The nearest he could get to what was evidently a very strong and beloved memory picture ran thus: *A blue cloud it was, you know, all feathery blue, like a cloud, and it had bluer things in it like swords, you know, like blue swords they were.' 192 GARDEN NOTES IN 1921 What flowers made this effect precisely I shall probably never know. Anyway, a long border is now planted thickly with Forget-me-nots and Heavenly Blue Muscari." While on the subject of blue flowers, Aconi- tum wilsonii (205-4 in the French Chart, Ridg- way, deep, dull, bluish violet) is not at all a flower of solid color, and it is curious to notice, as it is held against the Ridgway page, how the very gray of that page, a background for the violet color squares, repeats the gray reflections in the flowers of the aconite. If any one will take the trouble to look at the lower half of Ridgway's Plate No. 32, leaving out the black squares be- low, he will get the whole general effect of Aconi- tum wilsonii as grown in my garden. I have sel- dom had such a disappointment in color as this. Yes; one that was even greater, I remember, and will tell of here. There appeared two years ago, in an English gardening journal, a letter from a writer all excitement over the new Sweet Peas. He lamented his own inability to procure seed of a novelty called "Mrs. Tom Jones" sent out by Sydenham — a Sweet Pea of a ''true blue." My curiosity aroused — that horticultural curiosity which will not dow^n — I sent for four packets of 193 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN ten seeds each. Judge of my amazement and de- light when I saw on each package these words: "Bright Delphinium Blue." What might we not accomplish in gardens with a really blue Sweet Pea ! Visions of clouds of azure flowers to bloom after Delphiniums had passed and hover over rose- colored Phloxes, above violet petunias, and so on, came with exciting clearness to my mind, and as the great day drew near for the opening of the first bloom of Mrs. Tom Jones I visited my six- foot row of plants every few hours. To what dis- appointments are we gardeners doomed ! Fancy mine when I not only could not see in the first open Sweet Peas here the blue I had expected, but on comparing it with the two color charts, the flower fell distinctly in the class of violets. Here I draw a long breath, and say to myself: "Can others feel as strongly as I do on such a subject as the color of one small flower.?" I think how foolish such excitement over details must seem to colder, clearer minds than mine, and I am reminded of a charming letter from an Eng- lishman, a writer on gardening, who after reading this very book wrote me as follows: "I don't find you guilty of cant, not so far, but you had better take care, because I am quite sure 194 GARDEN NOTES IN 1921 that the besetting sin of writers on horticulture and religion is cant. Writers on aesthetic garden- ing should go down on their knees every morning and beseech the Lord Almighty to save them from cant. I will giye you an example of one form of horticultural cant which infects almost every writer on aesthetic gardening — the universal praise of cottage gardens qua cottage gardens. A garden has only to be round a cottage and you may bring your colors into any sort of atrocious com- bination you choose and the result will be charm- ing, exquisite, something beyond the High Hall gardener's with all his resources. I love a nice cottage garden myself, if it happens to be neat and unpretentious and if the jflowers and vege- tables in it look happy — but I have never yet seen the cottage garden which, if I came to pos- sess it, I should not have remade within three months." May 28, 1921. In our apple-orchard is a picture of white flow- ers which furnishes one of the nicest examples possible of succession of bloom for late May and early June. It centres upon an old gray boulder, a rock which is our solitary possession in such 195 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN things, a rock which lay here under the apple- trees when twenty years ago we bought our two acres of ground. The stone is gray, and in late May the bough of the old Bellflower apple, which droops above it, is set with rosy buds and clear-white flowers. Below this branch may be seen the leafless, thorny stems of Rosa spinosissima altaica, one of my many delightful presents from Mr. W. C. Egan, whose eightieth birthday was lately cele- brated by the Garden Club of Illinois. Is there a pleasure comparable to that coming from the gift of a rare shrub or plant ^ I think not. Joy per- petual comes with such givings. In autumn and winter the dark haws of this rose are interesting, the thorny branches have their own attraction; in early spring the darting leaf buds are an excite- ment. In June the pure-white roses are a flowery miracle and our rock is again hung with, enveloped by, beauty. Now the leafless rose-stems of the first period I now describe hold the stage with their fine bloom. The Bellflower branch is clothed with green apple-leaves, while its lower neighbor proclaims to all how beautiful a species rose can be. This is a fine form of the Scotch rose, with thorns in thousands along its branches, a beauti- 196 GARDEN NOTES IN 1921 fully fine dark-green foliage, a short-lived flower set everywhere along its stems. It is extremely hardy, a decided acquisition to one's list of flow- ering plants. Also it is on the market, or I should not be so unkind as to sing its merits here. Where a low shrub with w^hite bloom may be needed for decorative effect in June, this is the subject to procure and plant. We spray our treasure now and then, but what plant that gives such true enjoyment is not worth this care ? If I have shown the beauty of the passing and the coming in the self-same spot of these two sub- jects, the apple blossom and the rose; if I have been able to suggest a little of my own deep plea- sure in this singularly interesting appearing, fad- ing, and reappearing of flowers above the boulder, I shall have done what I set out to do. It may be well to add that below the boulder is a small bird-bath, a shallow cup of cement set flush with the grass; that near the rock daffodil White Lady and viola Apricot (the exact color of its name) were planted this year to shine forth next spring against reaches of green leaves of lily- of-the-valley which flank the boulder on either side. What a centre of interest in flowers here — five subjects, three small, two large; they will 197 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN cause many exciting goings and comings over the little hills and dales of our greensward, for we are fortunate in living on uneven ground. June 3, 1921. And now that short but fragrant and most ex- citing time of blooming Philadelphus is here, and our commoner varieties, coronarius and grandi- florus, were never finer. It is a singular fact that the more hidden such shrubs are the better they happen to bloom; in unpromising spots such as beside the toolhouse and so on, the greater loveliness of bloom they seem to show. Our fin- est is in such an humble position, and next it, dripping over it indeed, is our best variety of Wistaria — a longer tassel of bloom, a richer lavender than those which hang in delicious pro- fusion over the trellises at each end of the brick terrace along the south side of the house at the moment. But these, too, have their charm, for they are this year hung thick with bloom, due to three or four years of very severe pruning. Each year we cut all young growth, twice during the summer back to two eyes; this we do after bloom- ing, then again some six weeks later. These vines are trained along a horizontal bar of the trellis, 198 GARDEN NOTES IN 1921 and in the summer much younger growth is pro- duced, which hangs Hke green curtains from the aforesaid bar. In winter we lift and tie these Hghtly to the bar, letting them down again in April or perhaps in March; this keeps them from wind injury. They refuse to hang straight when first released, but as soon as buds swell and flowers and leaves attain their growth, this^weight brings them most beautifully and decoratively into place. Then we have a picture of hanging lavender Wis- taria bloom all along the pendent stems, fifteen to the yard, which I think one of the sweetest pic- tures of color and of flowery embellishment possi- ble to see. Below these Wistarias is blooming, too, a fine white rose from an old New England gar- den, a double flat rose, set round with buds and with a handsome large green leaf, and beyond the Wistaria cascades and mounds of bloom of the ordinary Philadelphus lending both whiteness and perfume to the pretty scene. With a foreground for all this of clipped Cedar and Cotoneaster the effect of green and flowery growth is something of an achievement. And then to wander toward the garden, where in the freshest of early June green the radiance of pale Oriental Poppies shines forth framed in the delicacy of tall white Valerian, with 199 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN Geranium grandiflorum and the yellow of the Sherwin- Wright Iris not far off, gives variety to the morning or the evening. Below this Cranes- bill or Geranium is a delightful little hardy dian- thus of the most glowing solferino (coBspitosa) ; it is capital in association with the purple Geranium hanging above it. The season is so strange, the bursting into bloom of many flowers at once so un- usual that I am uncertain as to what to do about unwelcome colors, showing out of their time; for instance, here are fat buds of pink dwarf ramblers ready to open below the salmon pink of Poppies and the vivid deeper color of Poppy Cerise Beauty, one of the finest of all of this family of Oriental Poppies. This will never do, but which shall I shear away ? It will be a nice question to decide, and must depend, I believe, on the ultimate use of a cut flower. Valerian is the early white lace flower of our gardens, as Statice is the later lav- ender one. In a great group of cut Peonies, such as stands before me now, how difficult it is to choose the loveliest; Milton Hill with its beautifully ar- ranged petals and its lovely shell-pink tint; Heine Hortense even more like the inside of the conch-shell, which all of us held to our ear as chil- 200 GARDEN NOTES IN 1921 dren hearing the sound of ocean. This Peony- has flakes of carmine on its inner petals and a small but perfect centre of yellow stamens. Mme. August Dessert is one of the cool, pale pinks with a fine cup-shaped crown, a whitish collar, and pink guard petals, turning down from the others. Mme. Jules Dessert is a glory in white, very large and fine, with the faintest pink blush toward the centre; a purer white is Enchanteresse with cut- tings of the petals which add much lightness to the flower; also thread-like touches of carmine along the edges of a few of the white petals. Eugene Verdier is an old Peony; one of those de- licious combinations of palest pink and palest yellow. Raoul Dessert has its own fine flush of pink on pinkish white. It is small but said to last wonder- fully well in water. Livingston is rose pink, splendid in form, held on a strong, stiff stem, and with a delicious fragrance. Duchesse de Ne- mours is small but elegant, with broad petals of white, and a whole tuft of slender ones on top deepening in the centre to pale primrose-yellow. Philippe Rivoire is a rich, true solferino, beauti- fully flat and well shaped. It is solid, with heart- shaped guard petals, gradually narrowing to 201 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN slender ones in the centre. Every tone of the four on page 180 of the French Chart, Violet rougeatre, or Reddish Violet, belongs to this Peony. Peony Walter Faxon in its marvellous beauty has given me great difficulty with regard to its color mark- ing. French Chart 162, No. 1, is the nearest I could get to it. Lilac Rose; but the pink to most of us who do not compare it with a chart makes it perhaps the warmest of all pale Peonies. Tholite pink. Rose pink, Hermosa pink — I seem to find in this glorious long-petalled flower all these hues of Ridgway. It has the most roselike color of any Peony I know; that fresh clearness of hue which one only associates with rose-petals. I can but agree with Mrs. Harding that this is the finest Peony of my acquaintance; it is a dream in flow- ers; the unattainable in Peonies has been reached here. To-day the gardener came to me with a bloom of Iris ochroleuca on its tall stalk. It had flowered beside his cottage. Here we had it for several years, but it must have been in an overdry situ- ation, for it refused to bloom. I was sitting at the tea-table on the terrace, with Dykes' s "The Genus Iris" on a wicker chair beside me to the right and Mrs. Harding's ''Book of the Peony" on the SOS GARDEN NOTES IN 1921 other, for Peonies were beginning. Wilson's Iris, with its late pale-yellow flowers, was also bloom- ing in the garden, and I had been looking up Mr. Dykes's description of that when I found that Iris ochroleuca was only suited to damp places. Then came a question to the gardener: "WTiere did you grow this Iris?" "It was under the eaves of my house where water drops on it," he replied. This, of course, it was that gave him the flower which the plant refused to yield to me. What a strange Iris this is. The Greek ideal of the human figure included a small head, I think. What would the Athenian have said to the minute size of this Iris bloom at the top of a stalk three to three and one-half feet high, a flower not over three inches in spread? But it is a curiously lovely Iris, and where one comes upon it in colonies in western Asia Minor must have its own fine ef- fect. None could call it really beautiful, because of this disproportion between flower and stalk. I am always praising Valerian as a garden sub- ject, but till now, when my two-year-old plants are in their best estate, I could not truly know how valuable they are in the garden. This year they have proved the foundation for two distinctly successful effects. This is the 14th of June in a 203 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN strangely early season. Ten days ago when groups of Oriental Poppies of pale tones were in full bloom four things contributed to form delight- ful backgrounds for these brilliant flowers: the four arbor-vitse in the midst of the garden, the four globes of box, the smooth, clipped hedge of Privet ibota, and clouds of Valerian officinalis. A garden designed to be at its best for a period of ten days of early summer could not be more dar- ingly splendid than if made up of these two flow- ers, with clean-cut backgrounds of green. True, near the Valerians here were blooming some of the fine apricot-colored aquilegias from seed from Warley Place, but these, while they enhanced the picture, were not needed by it. To-day the Pop- pies are but dusky-topped seed-vessels, the Colum- bines have flown; but the Valerian persists. It is in great mounds of delicate bloom. Below it pale-pink rambler roses, TausendscJion^ have opened dozens of soft flowers and a totally new effect is seen; as pretty a garden picture as one could fancy for the month of June. The idea of coupling Valerian and Roses came to me from the garden of Mr. and Mrs. Edward L. Ryerson, of Lake Forest. Here, sitting on the little brick platform too, I see between two spires pf this 204 GARDEN NOTES IN 1921 same Valerian and about ten feet beyond it a forest of little violet spikes of Salvia virgata ne- morosa with round-headed, pure-white clusters near by of Phlox arendsii (white). To the left, where the low sun filters through its bells, is Cam- panula lactiflora in full bloom, its flowers inter- mingled with the strong, clear hue of some good Delphinium, many of whose upper buds are yet to open. Near these tall flowers again others rise, almost as tall or taller — Clematis recta's creamy white, Thalidrum glaucum's clear pale yellow. These horizontally blooming flowers make capital foils for the upright racemes of their blue and violet neighbors. And now in the green gloom of a June twilight how line comes out insistent as I survey this gar- den from one corner; the lovely perpendicular of budding Delphinium, of Salvia sclarea's great mauve bloom above its pale leaves of green crape, of Artemisia lactiflora'' s pointed foliage; of the Valerian, now past its best, and of Thermopsis, whose yellow inflorescence rises above the mauve of Salvia. These upright lines are based by softly curving ones of palest rambler roses in full bloom and round heaps of Phlox foliage, and for back- ground there are the level lines of turf, and walk 205 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN of privet hedge, close-clipped, and of trellis now well clothed with leaves of grape. I sometimes ask myself what is the day of greatest pleasure given by this garden; what change is the most welcome and creates the keen- est delight as I look ? To-day I know how to an- swer that question. For the surrounding hedge has had its occasional clipping and the clean, long lines, the solid squares of green trimmed privet are lovely to see. Every spraying bud, every blooming flower is the more beautiful for this velvet background of two tones of green — the lighter tone of the flat top of the hedge and the darker of its sides. The blue and violet splendors of the garden are three times as rich for this smooth foil. August 14, 1921. Not any coupling of cut flowers within my knowledge surpasses that of Clarkia Salmon Queen and Aster amellus elegans. The gardener in the cool climate does reckless deeds in his borders in late September with the sure approach of killing cold, so I, with this in mind, have pulled bodily from the ground one entire plant of Clarkia. This, its arching, flowery branches set with richest 206 GARDEN NOTES IN 1921 flowers of warm rose, is before me in a slender glass vase; its companion four or five sprays of the cool lavender aster. Every one who enters the room exclaims over the beauty of these two flow- ers together, and the light grace, the fascinating intermingling of the leafy green sprays of the Clarkia with the leafless ones of the aster with its starry flowers — the lightness, the beauty of color, of this association are truly most uncommon. In the borders Helianthiis orgyalis is blooming nobly on six and seven foot stalks with green Peony plants at its feet. At a distance from this brilliant spectacle in yellow, tall New England asters waste their rich purple color without the foil of a con- trasting hue. AMien these asters shall have bloomed we plan to move them where they so evidently belong — before the helianthus, which now seems to me almost beckoning to its purple contemporaries to come to its side. As it is more delicate in color and form than al- most any other August flower, so the hardy Ama- ryllis {Lycoris squamigera) is more dreadful in de- cay than many others of its strange companions. The notice of its passing should always have as preface the word "suddenly." At one moment one looks down upon a whorl of these beautiful 207 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN lilaceous things in all their splendor of palest pinks and blues, and at the next, if no buds remain upon the stalk to prove the freshness of the other flowers, here are two to four slender trumpets, brown and hanging. But, oh, the beauty of this flower for August in association with pink and white and lavender flowers and with the cloudy sea-lavender's rounded wave ! One reason, I think, for the less general use of Lycoris in our gardens is the probably common disappointment at its failure to bloom at once. Two to three years in my experience it takes to establish itself so as to flower freely, and after the third year the spikes are more and more in num- ber. A second reason for the seeming failure of the flower is surely neglect to mark its growing place while the spring foliage is still green. These leaves disappear utterly in July. There is then an interim during which it is all too easy for the im- pulsive or careless gardener to cultivate that bare spot or to plant something on it; the least touch of the trowel or fork being sufficient to behead the flower-stalk then forming below the surface of the ground. This year we made a serious mistake in cutting to the ground a mass of weedy Achillea, the 208 GARDEN NOTES IN 1921 pearl growing below these lilies just before their straight, brownish stems started upward from the soil. This left stalks too defined as the buds opened, and gave an ugly, leggy appearance. In vain I bent down trailing stems of blooming Statice latifolia to hide this defect; the shame of their nakedness still would appear. Time was when these flowers bloomed for me above Iris leaves, but the Irises have now been moved to other places and the Amaryllis remains. This flower is wonderfully good for cutting. It has fine lasting qualities in water, and takes graceful lines in a suitable jar or bowl. At this moment there is an arrangement before me of Lycoris and the short branches of the Copper Beech, and good indeed it is to look upon. And this mention of flower arrangement reminds me of a gay effect now on our dining-table which has caused more than one observant guest to ex- claim: "What a capital suggestion for a flower- garden!" Four of the narrow, pressed-glass con- tainers in general use, long, narrow, curved, and about two inches high, with pierced glass flower- holders fitting each container closely; four of these are filled with short-stemmed flowers of these varieties: Phloxes, A. Mercie and Elizabeth Camp- 209 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN bell, Ageratum Cope's Pet, Statice latifolia, and a very few buff zinnias, lavender, pink, buff; the combination is truly rich, and the lacelike statice gives the low arrangement the lightness needed by the more solid-looking flowers. As I look to the right in the garden I catch a charming composition, not prearranged. It is the level mauve of Sedum spedabile's panicles with the bluish grass back of it, Elymus arenarius. White geraniums, Mme. Recamier, stand before those flowers. The dwarf rambler, Tausendschon (one of the best of all summer effects), with leaves of lavender^below, makes up a September picture breathing all the delicacy of early summer. And only to-day have I arranged a bowl of flowers which seem to me a flowery miracle for late Sep- tember in our climate. Here were pale, straw- colored calendulas, phlox A. Mercie and Mrs. Jenkins, velvety Petunias of deep purple, Statice latifolia, late-sown Nigella Miss Jekyll, Salvia azurea, and lavender annual larkspur, with Ai'- temisia lactifloras sprays to give lightness as well as the statice. All these from the garden of this date. It hardly seems believable. Delicious, lovely, as all the garden seems and is, it would not be as lovely if that delicate creamy sheaf of Ar- 210 GARDEN NOTES IN 1921 temisia were not crowning the whole in its ap- pointed, balanced place. August 27, 1921. This week came the first heavy rain of this whole hot, dry summer. The garden was so filled with flowers that for the first time in all my gar- dening years I wished it less flowery and more green. The storm gave me my wish. It bent down all phloxes, heavy-headed flower-branches of all sorts, and to-day I have been hard at work with shears and two old bushel-baskets with rope handles. Almost the twelve baskets of fragments of the miraculous feast have been gathered up, and now one sees a garden chastened, humbled by storm and knife, but still throbbing with life and with colors beautifully brought together by Del- phiniums' second bloom and that of Buddleia and Salvia azurea, which are commencing to put forth flowers. Nothing more graceful and delicate has ever inhabited the garden than Artemisia, with space suflScient for its right development. For years I have adored this thing, but I have cramped it. Now it stands free at last and for four full weeks has given a glory to the garden. I look at it now, with tall lavender-blue spikes of Salvia farinacea 211 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN (very late blooming this year) below it with Sutton's pale primrose Sunflower aspiring toward it, with the ubiquitous flaming Zinnia kneeling at its feet, and I say to myself here is a garden sub- ject which may properly be called lordly, yet in its color, which harmonizes with all, conflicts with none, it is a gentle occupant of the border. There is a practical use of the "neat and twiggy" Salvia v. nemorosa. It makes the per- fect support in late August and September for the long, sticky branches of purple petunias. These, with a slender stake or two set into the Salvia, mount the green boughs of the sage, below which is a velvety planting of Stachys. This in turn has before it two plants of the little new Mignon Dahlia, whose inch-and-a-half-wide flowers shine out like stars against the rest. The aconites are yet to appear. Salvia azurea just commencing. It is one of those days known to all gardeners as a "growing" day. The atmosphere is almost as moist as the ground and the sun is intensely hot. And now on the threshold of autumn I begin to think of what is yet to bloom. Here are orange zinnias of unparalleled brilliance, from Truffaut's seed; here is a clear, pale-yellow calendula which ties the orange to the other hues in an easy way. Quantities of white Balsams are blooming on tall 212 GARDEN NOTES IN 1921 stems; indeed, they are carpeting the grass below them with the white of their fallen flowers. Physo- stegia is in full flower, late white phloxes also; Sedum spectabile is just opening those level clusters of its flowers, and Salvia farina cea is lovely with blue-lavender twisting lines of color. Pink mal- lows are everywhere. The glorious white Althea, William R. Smith, is in bloom against Artemisia lactiflora, and the violet Verbena venosa has just opened its first flowers below masses of Elymus arenarius, over which Buddleias are hanging many terminal promises of purple color. Buddleias, as I have said, are yet to come; so also is Wilson's Aconite with its rich violet. Ageratum is thickly strewn along garden edges and so are the hyacinth- flowered, mauve candytuft, the white alyssum, and the delicious Phlox Drummondii Isabellina, violet petunias are making their presence felt, as is also some late-sown purple annual larkspur. The end of this garden this year will be all gold and purple, as a season's end should be. Septembers, 1921. Gleams of late sunlight bring into bright relief against the clipped ramps of green flanking the garden-steps a great round cluster of Tausend- schon Roses — thirty -four on a stem — rising above 213 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN the gray leaves of lavender and the cool pinks of Sedum spedabile. Phlox of a deeper pink is bloom- ing above these pallid flowers and leaves, and higher still a Buddleia is just beginning to bloom. As one turns to the left, looking from the little platform, here are countless small Mignon Dahlias blooming in the air above the most vivid orange zinnias I have ever seen. Looking down another flowery vista I see lavender phloxes just over the low hedge, white and rich pink ones beyond, while the whole foreground is filled by two-foot flowers of the second-time blooming Delphinium. Be- yond this whole picture rise spires of pink mallow, and fronds, as one might say, of Artemisia ladi- flora in full beauty. One of the nicest groupings now adorning the garden is of this same Arte- misia, with the warm buff Zinnia Isabellina, be- yond it Phlox Von Lassberg's white flowers, be- yond this, and twining, oh, so delightfully among zinnia and Artemisia, are Salvia farinacea's charm™ ing silvery -la vender spikes. The zinnia just mentioned, Isabellina, is cer- tainly a garden "find." I used it this year back of Ageratum Cope's Pet, instead of the rose-pink zinnia which gave last summer a glowing border back of the same ageratum. (This was all along the upper garden- walk.) As I write I look up 214 GARDEN NOTES IN 1921 from my paper and see this pale coppery zinnia blooming superbly between the dark leaves of the French lilacs which stand along the walk, and here and there allowing thick clusters of the ageratum's lavender to be seen below the zinnia flowers. It is not easy to describe the color of the zinnia, but I would say that it has almost the varying tones of that lovely tulip, The Fawn. A pinkish tone overlies the buff of the flower and gives it what might be called a tawny effect. No color arrange- ment for a border has more delicacy, more of a subtle quality than this one just described. The colors are of a softness indescribable. But another little pathway planting I must touch upon and that is a new note struck this year, along the very short brick walk between hedges of clipped Spirea vanhouttei. Here that rose, Alheric Barbier, is rapidly growling toward the festoon state originally planned for it, and the connection of this border planting with that just described is this: that here, next the brick on either side, is another ageratum far richer in color than Cope's Pet. This is Ageratum fraseri, and it has not before been used in this garden. It is not so tall as the paler ageratum, but its flowers are much larger. Here it makes a most interesting color-pattern along the walk, especially since above 215 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN and among it is lightly, brightly blooming Phlox drummondii Chamois Rose, while the whole little gay flower embroidery lies on a groundwork of young Myosotis foliage from seeds sown in July for next May's beauty with tulips. Ageratum fraseri I got as plants from Richard Vincent and set them out in early June; at the same time we sowed two rows of the phlox seed back of the ageratum, and almost immediately, as it seemed to me, the two were in bloom and a small but dazzling surprise resulted. For as one turns into this walk, through a wooden arch hung with roses, he looks for no flowers within the green walls of hedge, and the fifteen or twenty feet of charming pink and lavender color provoke exclamations of pleasure. In that still soft radiance of September, sitting below the two pippin-trees on the small brick platform, I see before my delighted eye color un- speakably fresh and brilliant. Due to delayed frosts, on September 19, as I write there is across the garden a rich effect of color made up of these flowers: Stachys lanata, first and lowest; violet pe- tunias, above this, held up by the green-foliaged stems of Salvia virgata nemorosa; to the left a lovely flame-colored zinnia; back of that achillea in second bloom. Statice Silver Cloud is in fine 216 GARDEN NOTES IN 1921 lavender bloom; beyond the petunias and above all these rises a rose-pink phlox, also flowering for the second time; and in a bed farther away, lifting the gaze to Buddleias and Aconites in kingly color. Certainly there has not been before me in this garden a softer effect of flowers and foliage than the one on this September evening. Buddleia, very low and straggling, throws its bamboo-like leaves out from a central root. This foliage is of the softest gray-green; beside it falls a cascade of Elymus arejiarius, adding a bluer tone. All these soft gray-blues are shot through by two or three stout zinnia plants in full bloom and the color of these double flowers shading as they do from pinkish cream to a soft yet deep old rose at the outer and lower edges of those domes of petals, is supremely lovely with the foliage encircling it. WTiat a provision are such sights as these against that time 'When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold." As, on rereading them, I think over these notes, there comes to mind a paragraph from "Studies in Gardening" which seems to set forth better 217 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN than any before the reason for the making of good gardens: 'There is something in the order and quiet of a beautiful formal garden, in its perfect reconcile- ment of nature and man, which gives one a greater love of life, and this is just the same feeling that one gets from the enjoyment of a beautiful house. Both seem to prove that man is not a mere de- facer of the world, that if he chooses he can add beauty to it, even in fulfilling his own wants, like the flowers themselves. The best art is nearer to nature than any attempt to imitate her, because it comes into being, like her beauties, for some purpose outside itself.' And while I would not have those who read believe that I consider the small garden, which has been the subject of this last year's notes, a beautiful garden — for I am only too sensitive to its shortcomings and eager for its improvement year by year — I may be forgiven for the great pleasure I take in sharing with them the following brief description of the garden written by Miss Sarah W. Hendrie for the "Bulletin" of the Garden Club of America, and given here exactly as there published by the kind permission of all concerned. 218 XIV THE GARDEN AT ORCHARD HOUSE Really, to create a garden, it is necessary to fling away ambition, social pleasures, to reduce natural responsibil- ities to a minimum, and if you are a man, to retire on a certain income. If you are a woman, then marry an artist, an author, or a clergyman, and make it clear to him that your garden is to be the central idea of both your lives, stipulate for an adequate allowance to meet the tempta- tions of the autumn catalogues, select your friends, dis- card your acquaintances, and set to work. — Maby Anstell, "The Happy Garden." XIV THE GARDEN AT ORCHARD HOUSE BY S. W. HENDRIE As a member of the Garden Club of Michigan, -^ ^ it was with eager anticipation that I went to Orchard House, to see the garden of Mrs. Francis King, and describe it for the Bulletin. It was just ten years ago that she inspired us to start a garden chib and became its first president. Since then she has continued to stimulate our interest and arouse our imaginations with reports of im- portant work being done, news of new and rare plants and fascinating (and successful) color com- binations. As the train neared Alma, I began to doubt my wisdom in coming. Mrs. King's garden is a spring garden par excellence, and one which should be described at its best ! Any garden at the end of August, 1921, after our terrible summer and long drought should look badly, — what would I find ^ We drove through shady streets up to a rather 221 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN English-looking house and walking up the broad brick path, with its border of low grapes trained on chains, one visualized the spring planting of bulbs, which she so delightfully describes. Now the form of the grape leaves, and the fine foliage mass of two Viburnum carlesii flanking the step, take the place of the earlier, more colorful pic- tures. In the living-room one's eye was immediately caught and held by a tall jar of Lycoris squamigera (amaryllis halli) which introduced the dominant note of the whole garden beyond. I say domi- nant, because, though at this time of year a phlox garden, with only four strong groups of this lovely amaryllis in the four central beds, yet everything else seems auxiliary, planted to show off and em- phasize its delicate beauty of color. In one bed the tall stiff stems with their crown of blue-shaded pink flowers, stood out from among feathery mauve clumps of Statice latifolia. White phlox gave body to the background, echoed by a heavy mass of a clear white geranium at the front of the bed, while between them were zinnias, flesh pink to a dull, almost purple rose, Salvia farinacea, a velvet purple petunia, and at the edge, Stachys and Ageratum. Seen beyond this bed of 222 THE GARDEN AT ORCHARD HOUSE mauves and pinks, a touch of a deep rich almost magenta phlox gave meaning to the whole. Here you have very pale pink merging through mauves and lavenders into deep purple, a range of color intensiiSed, yet brought into harmony, by the difference in texture of both flowers and foliage. Without the gray of the Stachys and Salvia much of the ethereal quality of the planting would be lost. The same amaryllis with echinops in the back- ground, phlox Antonin Mercie, Mme, Paul Dutrie, and Elizabeth Campbell, and the roselike flowers of one of Sutton's Camellia-flowered balsams as foreground, is seen against the varying blue and gray-greens of Lonicera and Abies concolor. Another combination of Mrs. King's favorite blue-greens and pale-pinks, showing a particularly good variety of form, was a shaggy rose-colored poppy, with its decorative seed-pods, sweet lav- ender with stiff silvery foliage, fleshy Sedum spec- tabile, not quite in bloom, Buddleia with darker foliage of the same tone, and, used just where an accent was needed, the blue lyme grass, Elymus arenarius. This planting was near the edge of the garden overshadowed by apple-trees. For those who love the yellows and bronzes 223 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN rather than the cooler colors, there was a planting of flaming orange zinnias, spiral mignonette, and (this one of nature's happy accidents) the red bronze seed-pods of nigella in the foreground. A phlox garden, white and pink, lavender and rose-color, where one forgets the phlox, save as it gives a needed solidity of form and hue, such is Mrs. King's garden. The feeling of form is en- hanced by an enclosing hedge, almost as broad as high and as smooth and solid as a wall. Behind it is the real garden background — big shrubs on one side and on the other, and, at the far end of the garden, a grape-covered trellis with arched gate- ways, which in June are a glory of climbing roses. Through one of these arches is the service-yard, while through the other up a few steps, on a higher level, are the picking-garden and trial-garden, made gay with borders of annuals. Here, at the end of the path which forms a continuous vista from the loggia, is a quaint garden-house, backed by silver poplars, and presided over by fanciful wooden birds which give it quite a foreign air. Opposite the entrance to the service-yard a brick-paved circle serves as a transition from garden to lawn. Benches here under two apple-trees make a shady retreat from the glare of an August sun. 224 THE GARDEN AT ORCHARD HOUSE Turning from the garden with its hint of coming autumn, in budding clematis and aconite, one looks out across the undulating lawn, shadowed by the old trees which give Orchard House its name, and visualizes the spring, for here are the collec- tions of lilacs, flowering apples, cherries, peonies, and other choice shrubs. One boundary is planted with the newer Japanese quinces — scarlet to palest yellow. Under the flowering trees and in all the shrub borders, many kinds of early bulbs, crocus, scilla, daffodil, are followed by collections of cottage and Darwin tulips, glorifying the or- chard in May. Perhaps, instead of describing color combina- tions and isolated pictures, I should tell you of what the paths are made and how many beds make up the formal design. But the things which char- acterize Mrs. King's garden are not bricks and mortar, nor geometric forms. Well-thought-out color groupings, the clever choice of form, shown in the juxtaposition of feathery and solid masses, the predominance of silver-gray and blue-green foliage, the use of annuals (be it tall Lavatera or dwarf Ageratum), the right one for its place — re- straint in the use of plants, for, given her knowl- edge, what a temptation to use many new and 225 THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN ' . . . ' different sorts instead of the comparatively few kinds found in her garden ! These are what one notices and remembers. A feeling for form and color, intelligent choice, the power of restraint, go far toward making a good garden — but wherein lies charm ? A hint came to me as I was taking these notes. Sitting where I could see both garden and orchard, my eye was caught by an old temple bell dangling from a branch just waiting for an alighting bird to set it ringing. Where did it come from ? What had it not seen.? My mind wandered across the garden to the loggia, where Mrs. King was sort- ing her huge morning mail. The beginning for my notes, "All American garden lovers know Orchard House, " would not do at all — the classification "American" is too narrow, for England, France, Spain, Italy constantly contribute to the widened horizon of this comparatively remote garden at Alma, Michigan. PBOPttRTY UBRAKf N. C. State CoUem 226 INDEX INDEX Abies coxcolor, 223 Achillea Ptarmica, 23, 32, 34; pearl, 50 Acidanthera bicolor, 177 Aconite, 217, 225; Wilsonii, bluish- violet, 193, 213 Acquilegias, apricot-colored, 204 Ageratum, blue, 70, 71, 73, 222; Stella Gurney, 148, 152, 156, 175; Cope's Pet, 210, 214; fraseri, 215, 216 Altheas, 95; William R. Smith, 213 Alyssum, 30; saxatile, 104; sul- phureum, 132; hardy, 130 Amaryllis, Lycoris squamigera, 207- 209, 222; Achillea, 208, 209; echinops, 223 American Gardens, Lowell, 136 Anchusa Italica, 47; Dropmore, 69, 112, 141, 168; myosotidiflora, blue, 190 Anemones, Japanese, 151, 198 Antirrhinum, Purple King, 177 Apple, Bellflower, 196, 225 Aquilegia chrysantha, see columbine Arabis, 10, 30, 31, 49, 60 Araott, S., 99 Artemisia, 211; lactiflora, 205, 210, 213, 214 Aster, hardy, 36, 37, 43, 44, 74; Ostrich Plume, 146; James Ganly, 148, 177; amellus elegans, 206, 207 Aubrietia, 10, 92, 124; with tulips, 140 Baby's Bbeath, see gypsophila Balsams, salmon-pink, 110, 151; white, 212, 223 Begonia, 10 Blanket flower, see gaillardia Bleeding-heart (dicentra), 18 Bloodroot, 16, 50 Book of the Peony, The, Mrs. Hard- ing, 202 Border, double, 131 Bowles, E. A., 88, 96, 99 Box, green, in flower arrangement, 183 Buddleia, 176, 211, 213, 217, 223 Bulletin, Garden Club of America, Sarah W. Hendrie, quoted, 221- Calendulas, Orange King, Sulphur Queen, 42; orange, 184; straw- colored, 210; pale yellow, 212 Campanula, hardy, 32; Die Fee, 45; pyramidalis, 45, 48, 110; persici- folia, 159; lactiflora, 205 ' Candytuft, hardy, 11 Canterbury bells, 31, 32, 46, 48-50, 109, 111, 161 Cedar, 199 Century Magazine, The, 67 Chamomile, 35 Cherries, 225 Chrysanthemum, Garza, 153;French, 172 Chrysanthemum Society of France, 7, 15 Cinerarias, 10 Clarkia elegans, 36; Salmon Queen, 206, 207 Clematis, 225; purple, 13; recta, 61; cream- white, 205 Color chart, 15, 193, 202 229 INDEX Color effects, Ruskin quoted, 1, 2; use of trial garden for, 53 Color in the Flower Garden, Jekyll, 13; quoted, 14, 15 Columbine, early, see Aquilegia; chrysantha, 27, 32; yellow, 45; white, hybrid, 108; with iris, 141 Cosmos, 48; early-flowering, 178 Cotoneaster, 199 Cottage gardens, 195 Crambe cordifoUa, 11, 54; orien- talis, 33 Crocus, 225; purpureus, 17, 79-81; Maximillian, 78, 95; Reine Blanche, 79, 82, 94, 95; Lamium macula turn collecting, 88; Mont Blanc, 93, 95; Mme. Mina, 93, 95, 96; Susianus, 97; Sieberi, 97; Korolkowi, 98; "Scotch," 98; Tommasinianus, 98; May and Dorothy, 98; Kathleen Parlow, 99 Cynoglossum, blue, Pictum or creti- cum, 191, 192 Daffodil, 185, 223; double, 16; cream- white, 43; Jacobs's list, 58, 60; trumpets, yellow, white, and bicolor, 58; yellow perianths, pheasant eyes, doubles, and bunch- flowered, 59; Eyebright, 59, 60, 162; Firefly and Elvh-a, 59, 60; with peonies, 87; true place for, 139; Elvira, Noble, and Chal- lenger, 186, 187; rock. White Lady, viola apricot, 197 Dahlias, 182; mignon, 212 Daisies, common, 32, 159; Shasta, 33 Delphiniums, 205, 210, 211, 213, 214; blue, 10, 11, 13; pale-blue, 32; Belladonna, 33; Cantab, 33, 160; chinensis, 34, 46, 72; dark-blue, 159; La France, 159, 160; Mme. Violet Geslin, 160; Kelway's Lovely, 160; Persimmon, 160; Statuaire Rude, 161; Alake, 161; Capri, Moerheimi, 162 Deutzia Lemoineli, 107 Dianthus, 36; hardy. Her Majesty, 43; solferino coespitosa, 200 Dicentra eximia, mauve, 190 Dogtooth violet, 77 Dragonhead, 47 Egan, W. C, 9, 196 Elder, common, 21 Elymus, arenarius, blue, 37, 39, 210, 213, 217, 223; with gladioli, 149 Eremuri, 243; Erigeron, 243 Eryngium, 163 Farb, Bertrand H., his list of Oriental poppies, 167 Florists Exchange, The, 184 Florists' Review, The, 184 Flower arrangement, 181, 183, 184 Flower cutting, 181, 182 Flowers of the Al'pine Valleys, Flem- well, 77 Foliage in flower arrangement, 183, 184 Forbes, 54 Forget-me-not, see Myosotis Foxgloves, 32; perennial, 159 Fruit-tree, dwarf, 72 Funkias, 11 Gaillardia, 21, 22 Galtonias, 145 Garden Club of America, Bulletin, quoted, 221-226 Garden Club of Rlinois, 196 Garden Club of Lookout Moimtain, Tennessee, 185 Garden, formal, 11; experiments with, 65; clipped trees in a, 68, 195; trial, 53-57; of phloxes, 55; "wild," 67; Mrs. Tyson's at Ber- wick, Me., 67; Miss Willmott's, Warley, Eng., 72; Mr. Chas. A. Piatt's, Saginaw, Mich., 73; repe- tition in, 74; Mrs. King's at Alma, Mich., 221-226 230 INDEX Garden of Ignorance, The, Mrs. Cran, quoted. 192, 193 Garden, The, Rev. Joseph Jacob, quoted, 58 Garden Magazine, The, Miller quot- ed, S3 Garden Month by Month, The, Sedg- wick, 15 Gardeners' Chronicle, 134 Genus Iris, The, Dyke, 202, 203 Geranium, 23; Beaute Parfaite, 151; grandiflorum, purple, 200; Mme. Recamier, white, 210, 222 Gladiolus, 185; Baron Hulot, 7, 28, 153, 172; purple, 13, 28, 48, 69; William Falconer, 37, 69, 155; Niagara and Panama, 145, 147, 148; Badenia, 146, 174; Louise, 146; Herada, with salvia and phlox, 146, 147; Roselle. 147; Orange Glory, 147; America, 147, 155, 172; Peace, Dawn, and Afterglow, 149-151; Taconia, Phil- adelphia, and Evolution, 151; Ro- sella, 153; Senator VoUand, 153; Buchanan, Snowbird, La Luna, California, and Princess Altiere, 154; Sulphur King, 155; Kun- derd's Glory, 155; Mrs. Frank Pendleton, Jr., 155, 171; Dawn, 162; primulinus hybrids, 165, 170; display, 166. 170 Gladiolus Grower, The Modern, 146 Gladiolus Society, American, 7, 146 Grape, 222 Gypsophila, 11; annual, 32; pani- culata, 32, 33, 50, 164, 169; elegans. 73; in bud, 110; in mass, 162; double, 165 Happy England, Allingham, 77 Hedges, privet ibota, 35, 204, 206, 224 Helianthus orgj-alis, 177, 207 Heliotrope, 7, 182; deep purple, 34, 05, 70; dark, 156 Hepatica, 77, 79 Heuchera, 11; sanguinea, 34, 55-57, 127 Hollyhocks, 10, 11; lemon and white, 35, 50, 66, 72; rose-pink, 163 Honeysuckles, bush, 107. Ill, 184, 185 Hound's Tongue, see Cj'noglossum Hyacinth, Wood, 3, 8; Holbein, 20, 83; Heavenly Blue grape, 28. 43, 78, 92, 93; Lord Derby, 80, 81, 83; blue, 193 Hydrangea, white, 11, 126, 164 Iberis Gibraltarica, SO, 50 L-is, 5, 209; German, Enghsh, Si- berian, and Dutch. 5; reticulata, 14, 79; dwarf, 18; Germanica, 19, 48, 66, 135, 141; pallida, 110, 127, 132, 136; English, 111; Kaemp- feri, 132,^133; Mauve Queen, 132, 133; Japanese, 5, 133; Crusader. 139; Sherwin- Wright, yellow, 200; ochroleuca, 202, 203; Wilson's, pale yellow, 203 Jacob, Reverend Joseph, quoted, 91, 92 Japanese quince, 80, 83. 225 Jasmine, yellow Southern, 264 Jekyll, Miss, quoted. 13-15; on use of sea-holly, 22, 57, 184, 199; list of tulips, 86 Jonquils, Campernelle, 30 Labels, 62, 185 Lamium maculatum. 85 Larkspur, annual. 12. 32, 261; Salvia patens, 46; see also Delphinium Lavender, sweet, 223 Letson, B. F., on flower cutting and arrangement, 181-184 Lilacs, 18, 182, 225; with tulips, 140 Lilies, white, 10; orange, 10; Lillum elegans, 21; longiflorum, 33; can- 231 INDEX didum, 35, 48, 50, 66; plantain, 73; orange, superbum, 170 Lily-of-the-VaUey, 197 Live Oaks, 165 Lonicera, 108, 223 Love-in-the-mist, 36 Lucas, E. v., quoted, 162 Lupines, 127 Lyme grass, see Elymus Mahonia, 16, 83 Mallow, 14 Mertensia Virginica, 125 Michaelmas Daisy, see Aster Mignonette, 182, 224 Mullein, 72 Muscari, see Hyacinth Myosotis, 19, 29, 189, 193, 216 early, 28; dissitiflora, 43; Sutton's Perfection and Sutton's Royal Blue, 43, 124, 190, 191; hardy, 84, 93, 132-135, 138; Barr's Alpine, blue, 190, 191 Narcissus, 184; Orange Phoenix, 16 poeticus, gardenia, 16; Emperor, cynosure, 41; listed, 58; among peonies, 87 Nemesia, blue, 13 Nigella, Miss Jekyll, 210 Orchard House, The Garden at, 221-226 Pansy, 4 Peake, 192 Peas, purple, sweet, 13; Countess Spencer, 27; everlasting, 47; Stor- ing Stent, 165; lavender, 184; Mrs. Tom Jones, blue, 193, 194 Pentstemon, 163 Peonies, 31, 32, 49, 50, 57, 88, 185, 200. 207, 225; Mme. Emile Galle, 132, 159, 160; Milton Hill, Reine Hortense, pink, 200; Mme. August Dessert, Mme. Jules Dessert, En- chanteresse, Eugene Verdier, Raoul Dessert, Livingston, Du- chesse de Nemours, Philippe Rivoire, 201; Walter Faxon, Mrs. Harding, 202 Petunia, 7, 212, 213, 216, 217; single, 13; velvet-purple, 146; violet, 194 Philadelphus, coronarius and grandi- florus, 198; white, 199 Phloxes, 214, 222, 224; perennial, 3, 4, 61; annual, 11; purple, 13; Pan- theon, 22, 36, 61, 163, 175; Eugene Danzanvilliers, 4, 23, 34, 61, 148; Drummond, Chamois Rose, 31, 34, 37, 69; Antonin Mercie, 4, 6, 61, 163, 176, 177; Lord Rayleigh, 4, 6, 32, 34, 61, 70; Fiancee, 36; pink, 43; white, 50; dwarf, 54; garden of, 55; Aurore Boreale, 23, 36, 68; Von Lassberg, 4, 23, 36, 71; Jeanne d'Arc, 71, 176; R. P. Struthers, 61, 163; Coquelicot, 23, 36, 62, 163, 175; Fernando Cortez, 22, 36, 62, 69; Tapis Blanc, 72, 163; Von Hochberg, 148; su- bulata, 83, 84; divaricata, 84, 124; decussata, 149; Drummondii lutea with gladiolus, 146; Goliath, 173; Rhynstrom, 175; Von Dedem, 175; Braga, 175; Widar, 175; di- varicata canadensis, 188; rose- colored, 194; Arendsii, white, 205; foliage, 205; A. Mercie, 209, 210, 223; Elizabeth Campbell, 209, 223 ; Mrs. Jenkins, 210; Drummondii Isabellina, 213; Von Lassberg, white, 214; Chamois Rose, 216; rose-pink, 217; white, 222; Mme. Paul Dutrie, 223 Physostegia (Virginica rosea), 6, 36, 47; white, 69; rosy, 154 Pinks, 31; annual and hardy, 32; scented, white, 44 Planting, balanced, 68 Platycodons, 48; grandiflorum al- bum, 166; pearly- white, 178 232 INDEX Plumbago capensis, pale lavender, 188, 189; red, 189 Poker flower, 73 Poppy, 34, 182; White Swan, 42; Ice- land, 42; Oriental, 44, 127, 128, 166, 199, 204; double, pink, 112, 105; Princess Victoria Louise, 167; combinations of, 168, 169; see Fan- list, 167; Shirley, 167; Mahony and Rose Queen, 108; salmon-pink. Cerise Beauty, 200; rose-colored, 223 Primrose, 4; Munstead, 30, 49, 84; pale-yellow, 124 Puschkinia, 81, 82, 107 Pyrethrum, rose, 31; single, 159 Pyrus Japonica, 82 Quince, Japanese, 80, 83, 225 Repertoire de Couleurs, 7, 15 Rhododendron, 3 Ribbon grass, 124 Ribbon in flower arrangement, 184, 185 Rodgersia, 33 Roses, 3, 182; Frau Karl Druschki, 27; climbing, 34; yellow, 44; ram- blers, crimson, 3, 10; baby, 34, 49, 62; yellow, 44; Lady Gay, 34, 62; Excelsa, 62; Rosa Nitida, 110; Wichuraiana, 20; spinosissima, 141, 196, 197; with gladioli, 149; Annchen Mueller, 160; Conrad F. Mayer, 163; double flat white, 199; Tausendschon, 204, 210, 213; Al- beric Barbier, 215 Ruskin, quoted, 3, 80 Salpiglossis, 11, 13; Faust, 148 Salvia, 223; blue, 13; patens, 30, 37, 46; farinacea, lavender-blue, 37, 211, 213, 214, 222; Azurea, 146, 153, 210-212; Sclarea, 205; vir- gata nemorosa, 212, 216 Scabiosa Japonica, 34 Scilla Sibirica, blue, 16, 17, 79, 94, 225; campanulata, 28, 104, 108, 109; Excelsior, 141 Sea-holly, 22, 36, 62, 162, 163, 164 Sea-lavender, see Statice Seasons in a Flower Garden, The, Shelton, 15 Sedum spectabile, 210, 213. 214, 223 Shasta daisies, 23, 33 Snapdragon, 35, 146 Snowball, Japan, 73 Snowdrop, 50 Spireas Thunbergii, 84; Astilbe Arendsii, Die Walkiire, 132, 136; Van Houteii, 137, 215 Spring beauties, 77 Stachys, 212, 222, 223; lanata, 110, 216 Statice, 11, 27, 34, 200; incana, 110, 164; bonduelli, 163, 164, 169, 177; latifolia, 104, 209, 210, 222; sinu- ata, mauve, 169; Silver Cloud, 216 Stocks, 13; white and purple, 34, 36; pink, 37; Sutton's Perfection, 45 Stokesia cyanea, 34, 46 Studies in Gardening, quoted, 218 Sunflower, Dwarf Primrose, 177, 212 Sweetbrier, 31 Sweet-william, 31; dark-red, 46; Sutton's Pink Beauty, 50 Syringas, 31 Thalictrum glaucum, yellow, 205 Thermopsis Caroliniana, 28, 32, 68, 205 Thrift, 10 Tritonia, 73 Tulips, 8, 19; Kaufmanniana, 16, 17, 82, 94, 99; double, 20; retroflexa, 28, 30, 43, 93, 138, 142; Keizer- kroon, 8; Vermilion Brilliant, 41, 83, 124; Flora Wilson, 30; Yellow Rose, 44, 132, 134; Cottage Maid, 49, 225; Gesneriana, 49; Vitellina, 82, 104; La Merveille, 83, 84; Cou- leur Cardinal, 20, 30, 83, 124, 138; 233 INDEX Darwin, 19. 85, 225; Clara Butt, 19, 85; Ewbank, 19, 122, 140; Frelage list, 85, 86; Vitellina, 82; Fanny, Wouverman, Carl Becker, Giant, and Kdnigin Emma, Cre- puscule, Faust, Giant, La Candeur, La Tristesse, Mme. Krelage, Mar- garet, Mr. F. Sanders, Raphael, Haarlem, 85; groups: Eubank and Morales, Faust, Grand Monarque, Purple Perfection and D. T. Fish, Bronze King, Bronze Queen, Golden Bronze, Dom [Pedro, and Louis XIV, Salmon Prince, Orange King, Panorama, Orange Globe, and La Merveille, 86; with daffo- dils, peonies, and narcissus, 86, 87; Bouton d'Or, 125; Darwin, Fawn, 105; and Faust, 106; grouping of, 104; varieties of, 106; Breeder, 106; Flora, 117, 141; Nauticas, 118; Mauve Clair, 119; Zomer- schoon, 119, 123; Moonlight and Sprengeri, 120; Francis Darwin and Edmee, 122; Le Reve, 125, 137; border suggested, 125, 127; Agneta, 132, 134; Gudin, 134; William Copeland, 134; La Fian- cee, 137; Heloise, 138; Hohenberg, 138; May-flowering, 123; combi- nation with other plants, 124; Pic- otee, 124; Jubilee, 137; Avis Ken- nicott, 137; among evergreens, 138; Bougainville Duran, 140; with lilacs, 140; Ewbank, Bleu Ce- leste, Morales, Innocence, and La- candeur, 141; "lily-flowered," 141; John Ruskin, 190 Tulips, Jacob, 126 Valerian, 205; white, 199, 200; offi- cinalis, 204 Verbena, 7, 11; Beauty of Oxford, 23, 35, 49; Dolores, 149, 174, 177; venosa violet, 213 Viburnum, carlesii, 188, 222; plica- tum, Japanese, 188 Violas, 13, 30; white, 50 Violet, wild, 4; sweet, white, 50; dog- tooth, 77; to revive, 183 Wistaria, lavender, 198, 199 Woman's National Farm and Gar- den Association, 181 Wood and Garden, Jekyll, quoted, 14 ZiKNiA, 36, 210, 212, 215, 217, 222; "Flesh-color," 42, 70, 136; cream- white, 164; Isabellina, 214; flame- colored, 216; orange, 224 2f?4