94 FLOWER GARDENING 



outset and time spent in replanting later. 



Suppose, to get away from the abstract, half a 

 dozen oriental poppies and as many plants of 

 "baby's breath" (Gypsophila paniculata) are set 

 out in a home nursery bed in parallel rows, about 

 fifteen inches apart and the plants nine inches 

 apart in the rows. If the plants are of commer- 

 cial size they may not seem too close together in 

 the row the first year; but the second year they 

 will look crowded and there will be every sign 

 that thinning or complete replanting must be done 

 earlier than ignorance had suspected would be the 

 case at the time they were so very carefully set out 

 at apparently wide spaces. 



Possibly ignorance, had the planting been done 

 in a garden, would have taken it for granted that 

 no change would be necessary for years. The 

 second season it is noticed that an oriental poppy 

 is likely to have a spread two feet in diameter 

 while the masses of "baby's breath" in the bloom- 

 ing season will perhaps be twice that distance 

 across. Meanwhile this will have been discov- 

 ered the first year and will be still plainer the sec- 

 ond; the poppy blooms early in summer and soon 

 the plant turns brown and dies down to the ground, 

 the while the later-blooming "baby's breath" is 

 spreading out toward it and gradually concealing 

 its unsightliness. It is also seen that by the time 

 the "baby's breath" is turning brown a couple of 

 vines of Thunbergia alata, from seed that hap- 

 pened to fall there, are making their way over the 



