The China Asters. 215 



may be more or less conlined by plantings of shrubs and trees and 

 many kinds of plants. This border planting sets bounds to the place, 

 making it one's own ; it is homelike. The person lives inside his 

 place, not on it. He is not cramped up and jostled by things scat- 

 tered all over the place, with no purpose or meaning. Along the 

 border, against groups, often by the corners of the residence or in 

 front of porches, — these are places for flowers. When planting do 

 not aim at designs or effects ; just have lots of flowers, a variety of 

 them growing luxurantly, as if they could not help it. 



I have asked a professional artist, Mr. Mathews, to draw me the 

 kind of a flower bed that he likes. It is shown in Fig. 38, at the 

 beginning of this bulletin. It is a border, — a strip of land two or 

 three feet wide along a fence. This is the place where pig weeds 

 usually grow. Here he has planted marigolds, gladiolus, golden- 

 rod, wild asters, China asters, and — best of all — hollyhocks. Any 

 one would like that flower garden. It has some of that local and 

 indefinable charm which always attaches to an " old-fashioned gar- 

 den," with its exuberant tangle of form and color. Every yard has 

 :some such strip of land along a rear walk or fence or against a build- 

 ing. It is the easiest thing to plant it, — ever so much easier than 

 digging the hideous geranium bed into the center of an inoftensive 

 lawn. 



There is no prescribed rule as to what you should put into these 

 flower borders. Put in them the plants you like. Perhaps the 

 greater part of them should be perennials, which come up of them- 

 selves every spring and which are hardy and reliable. Wild flowers 

 are particularly effective. Everyone knows that many of the native 

 herbs of woods and glades are more attractive than some of the 

 most prized garden flowers. The greater part of these native 

 flowers grow readily in cultivation, sometimes even in places which, 

 in soil and exposure, are much unlike their native haunts. Many 

 of them make thickening roots, and they may be safely transplanted 

 at any time after the flowers have passed. To most persons, the 

 wild flowers are less known than many exotics which have smaller 

 merit, and the extension of cultivation is constantly tending to 

 annihilate them. Here, then, in the informal flower border, is an 

 opportunity to rescue them. Then one may sow in freely of easy- 

 growing annuals, as marigolds, China asters, petunias and phloxes, 

 and the like. One of the advantages of these borders is that they 

 are always ready to receive more plants, unless they are full. That 



