214 Agricultural Experiment Station, Ithaca, N. Y. 



I sympathize with, the man who likes sunflowers. There is enough 

 of them to be worth looking at. They till the eye. Now show 

 this man ten square feet of pinks, or asters, or daisies, all growing 

 free and easy, and he will tell you that he likes them. All this has 

 a particular application to -the fanner. He grows potatoes and 

 buckwheat and weeds by the acre ; two or three unhappy pinks or 

 geraniums are not enough to make an impression. 



I suppose that everyone feels that the greatest charm of any land- 

 scape in the north is the greensward. It is the canvas upon which 

 every artist planter attempts to make a picture. But imagine a 

 painter putting a glowing bed of coleuses on his canvas, for a center- 

 piece ! The fact is, the easiest way to spoil a good lawn is to put a 

 flower l)ed in it ; and the most effective way in which to show o2 

 flowers to the least advantage is to plant them in a bed in the 

 greensward. Lawns should be large, free and generous, but the 

 more they are cut up and worried with trivial effects the smaller 

 and meaner they look. 



But if we consider these lawn flower beds wholly apart from their 

 surroundings, we must admit that they are at best unsatisfactory. 

 It generally amounts to this, that we have four months of sparse 

 and downcast vegetation, one month of limp and frost bitten plants, 

 and seven months of bare earth or mud. I am not now opposing 

 the carpet beds which professional gardeners make in parks and 

 other museums, but desire to direct my remarks to those humble 

 liome made flower beds which are so common in lawns of country 

 and city homes alike. These beds are cut from the good fresh turf, 

 often in the most fantastic designs, and are tilled with such plants 

 as the women of the place may be able to carry over in cellars or 

 in the window. The plants themselves may look very well in pots, 

 but when they are turned out of doors they have a sorry time for a 

 month adapting themselves to the sun and winds, and it is generally 

 well on towards midsummer before they begin to cover the earth. 

 During all these weeks they have demanded more time and labor 

 than would have been needed to have cared for a plantation of 

 much greater size, and which would have given flowers every day 

 from the time the birds began to nest in the spring until the last 

 robin had flown in November. 



I wish that instead of saying flower bed we might say flower 

 border. Any good place should have its center open. The sides 



