io6 FLOWER GARDENING 



years as circumstances necessitate, or warrant. 

 Whether the hardy scheme be formal or informal, 

 a vast amount of experience in the effect of mass- 

 ing blossoms and foliage, the combination of colors 

 and the meaning of skylines and vistas is to be 

 had in this way. 



You want to know, perhaps, how small taper- 

 ing evergreens would define certain garden formal- 

 ity, or would look in an irregular grouping. Ex- 

 periment with the annual that is well named sum- 

 mer cypress (Kochia trichophylla). The color is 

 light green, changing to a reddish tint in autumn, 

 but with the needed form there the imagination 

 can do the rest. Or you want to get the effect 

 of low shrubs; use the bushy four-o'clock, which 

 is a better annual (really a non-hardy perennial) 

 than it is credited with being if any of the self- 

 colored varieties is used by itself. Put to a prac- 

 tical test the color value of sheets of low bloom 

 by planting the blood-red Drummond's phlox or 

 the orange eschscholtzia, the value of irregular 

 spikes with larkspur, of rayed blossoms with 

 Brachycome iberidifolia, of blossoms thrown up 

 on long stems with sweet sultan, of scattered bloom 

 with cosmos, of clouds of tiny blossoms with 

 schizanthus and of pastel shades with scabiosa. 

 Work out formal effects with such annuals as the 

 China aster, candytuft, stock, godetia, alonsoa, tall 

 and dwarf zinnia, chrysanthemum, lupine and 

 French and African marigold any that are not of 

 sprawling growth. With a little study it will not be 



