CONCERNING HARDY PLANTS 43 



ized by cutting for house decoration, without depriv- 

 ing the garden beds of too much of their colour. At the 

 commercial florists, and in many of the large private 

 gardens, rows upon rows of flowers are grown on the 

 vegetable- garden plan, solely for gathering for the 

 house, and while those with limited labour and room 

 cannot do this extensively, they can gain the same end 

 by an intelligent use of their seed beds. 



Many men (and more especially many women), many 

 minds, but however much tastes may differ I think 

 that a list of thirty species of herbaceous perennials 

 should be enough to satisfy the ambition of an amateur, 

 at least in the climate of the middle and eastern United 

 States. I have tried many more, and I could be satis- 

 fied with a few less. Of course by buying the seeds in 

 separate colours, as in the single case of pansies, one 

 may use the entire bed for a single species, but the cal- 

 culation of size is based upon either a ten-foot row of a 

 mixture of one species, or else that amount of ground 

 subdivided among several colours. 



Of the seeds for the hardy beds themselves, the entic- 

 ing catalogues offer a bewildering array. The maker 

 of the new garden would try them all, and thereby often 

 brings on a bit of horticultural indigestion in which 

 gardener and garden suffer equally, and the resulting 



