i26 



THE CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST. 



Fig. 2508. DiCENTKA Canadense at Mr. 

 Alexander's. 



I have no intention of wearying you with 

 lists of names of these hardy plants. The 

 best and most useful list that I have seen is 

 that issued by the Experimental Farm at 

 Ottawa, consisting of 100 varieties and com- 

 piled by Mr. Macoun, the horticulturist there 

 in 1897. 



Just a word about the border itself. Hardy 

 perennials I find thrive best in good ground 

 with lots of rotted leaves worked into it. 

 The thrift of the plants in such soil is so 

 marked as to well warrant them getting it. 



These plants, many of them at least, in- 

 crease so fast and spread so much that they 

 require to be lifted, divided and replanted 

 every three or four years. Some of them, such 



as the perennial phlox, so exhaust the soil in 

 their immediate neighborhood that they are 

 better if their position is changed every two 

 years. The paeonies and some others are 

 better not to be moved. Every fourth year 

 I trench my perennial borders. I proceed as 

 follows : I take out a trench two spades 

 deep and two spades wide, wheeling the soil 

 to the other end where the operation will 

 finish. I then mark off" another space equal 

 in width to the trench made and with my 

 spade I take off about two inches of the top 

 soil and throw it into the bottom of the 

 trench ; on this I put a good coating ot 

 fresh manure, tree leaves or the product of a 

 rubbish heap of vegetable matter of any 



Fk;. 2510. Hardy Flower Border, at Mr. 

 Alexander's. 



Fk;. 2509. Iberis Gilbratica, (Candytuft. 



kind, then I throw upon this a spade deep 

 of the earth from the second trench, on the 

 lop of this I spread some well rotted man- 

 ure or humus of any kind, then on this I 

 throw up another spade deep of the soil left 

 in the trench ; when this is done we have a 

 second trench, the same depth and width as 

 the first, and so I proceed until I reach the 

 end ot the border, where I find the earth 

 taken out of the first trench to fill up the last 

 with, its two layers of manure or other en- 

 riching material sandwiched twice. You 

 will see that this really means the turning 



