. CHAPTER XXVII 

 PERENNIAL PLANTS 



IN the last chapter, when discussing the planning of the 

 garden,-! spoke as if it were to be planted and dug up all in 

 one year ; that is, as if all the plants were annuals. That is 

 best with school gardens, with very small gardens, and for all 

 gardeners who are afraid that they may tire of the work. 

 But those who studied the chapter well must have noticed 

 something : that it takes a long time to get flowers or vege- 

 tables from seed. The earliest flowers scarcely come before 

 June, and you can get lettuce, which is the first real vegetable 

 (for radishes and cress scarcely count), not very much earlier. 

 Even if you start these in the frames, the waiting is long and 

 slow. Yet as you looked into your neighbors' gardens 

 you saw beautiful flowers in May, or in April saw the gardener 

 carrying into the house large quantities of the best vegetables 

 in the world, and that from the open garden. 



Yes, but those were perennials. Your neighbor's colum- 

 bine, lily of the valley, peony, and among vegetables his 

 asparagus and rhubarb, all were planted in the same places 

 one, or two, or even more years ago. I have before me a 

 list of thirty-two common plants, all flowering in May, but 

 all of them hardy perennials. Gardening seems very easy, 

 does it not, when all one has to do is to uncover the plants 

 when the frost is out of the ground, to rake or dig lightly, 

 and fertilize a little, and then in return to receive handfuls or 

 armfuls of very early blossoms, or be able to cut asparagus 

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