The Canadian Horticulturist. 261 



have lots of flowers, a variety of them growing luxuriantly, as if they could not 

 help it. 



I have asked a professional artist, Mr. Matthews, to draw me the kind of a 

 flower-bed that he likes. It is shown in Fig. 800, at the beginning of this bul- 

 letin. 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, goldenrod, wild asters, China asters, and — best of all — hollyhocks. 

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

 able charm which always attaches to an " old-fashioned garden," with its exuber- 

 ant tangle of form and color. Every yard has some such strip of land along a 

 rear walk or fence or against a building. It is the easiest thing to plant it, — 

 ever so much easier than digging the hideous geranium bed into the centre of 

 an inoffensive 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 themselves ever)- 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, somes even in places which, in soil and exposure, 

 are much unlike their native haunts. Many of them make thickened 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 is their symmetry is not marred if some plants are pulled out and others 

 are put in And if the weeds now and then get a start, very little harm is done. 

 Such a border half full of weeds is handsomer than the average well-kept gera- 

 nium bed, because the weeds enjoy growing and the geraniums do not. I have 

 such a border, three feet wide and ninety feet long beside a rear walk. I am 

 putting plants into it every month in the year when the frost is out of the ground. 

 Plants are dug in the woods or fields, whenever I find one which I fancy, even 

 if in July. The tops are cut off", the roots kept moist, and even though the soil 

 is a most unkindly one, most of these much abused plants grow. Such a border 

 has something new and interesting every month of the growing season ; and even 

 in the winter the tall clumps of grasses and aster-stems wave their plumes above 

 the snow, and are a source of delight to every frolicksome bevy of snowbirds. — 

 Bailey, in Cornell Bulletin, No. 90. 



