198 The American Flower Garden 



be flowers for tender association s sake in his dream garden, 

 flowers to give away by the armful, larkspurs for the Sunday 

 evening tea-table when the old Nankin china is used, gaillardias 

 to fill the Indian baskets on his bookshelves, bee balm and colum 

 bine to attract humming birds next his porch, phloxes to help 

 him add to his butterfly collection, Madonna lilies for the church 

 altar, roses for the June brides, white flowers in abundance that 

 his garden may be lovely after dark when all other colours are 

 absorbed into the night, clove pinks for fragrance, irises for stately 

 form, hollyhocks for bold effects, candytuft whose snow is not 

 melted by sunshine, love-in-a-mist and honesty because they have 

 pretty names, Iceland poppies for their wealth of exquisite orange, 

 yellow and white tissue flowers from May to October, London 

 pride that grew in his mother s garden on the old farm, and a 

 miscellaneous assortment of other flowers because they are 

 beguilingly described or temptingly cheap no Chinaman s 

 opium dream in the Flowery Kingdom was ever more kaleido 

 scopic. 



After an orgie among the catalogues which, needless to say, 

 is the worst possible way to begin a garden, albeit the most pop 

 ular method, the dreamer must realise that the section of the 

 home grounds where perennials are to be grown needs to be 

 drawn to scale and planned even more carefully than other parts 

 of the place, for there colour, the most subtle and perplexing of 

 problems, becomes the principal factor of success. The border, 

 the old-fashioned or the formal garden, or wherever the prob 

 lematical plants are to be set out, will be charted and divided into 

 twenty-foot units of space, and the position of every plant indicated 

 by a number corresponding to the number assigned each flower 

 on the dreamer s list. This planting list should indicate not only 



