156 GARDEN FLOWERS. 



abode for flowers in a word, a flower garden, and an old- 

 fashioned one, if you choose to call it so. It should be one 

 where everything conspires to favor the growth of flowers, 

 so that one may gather them without stint. To look only 

 at a tree or shrub satisfies the observer, but flowers, to 

 be enjoyed to the full, must be plucked, their fragrance in- 

 haled, and their beauty of detail admired at leisure. 



It would seem best, at this point, to explain what plants 

 I mean to indicate as specially suited to a flower garden. 

 They are what may be somewhat technically termed 

 "hardy herbaceous perennial plants," herbaceous because 

 their growth dies down during the winter and starts up 

 the following spring, and perennial in contradistinction to 

 annual and biennial, because they continue to live for years. 



It is, of course, easy to name shrubs and bedding plants 

 that bear plenty of flowers, and there is certainly no valid 

 objection to planting them in the flower garden. Her- 

 baceous plants, however, can be so arranged as to furnish 

 bloom from March to Christmas, and an abundance of it ; 

 hence it seems to me that I am justified in recommend- 

 ing them, for the most part, to supply the flower garden. 

 There need be no hard and fast rules controlling the selec- 

 tion, as there are many plants suited for the flower garden, 

 such as hardy rose bushes, that we could not well do with- 

 out. It is indeed the proper place in which to grow them. 



The method of growing herbaceous plants differs but 

 little from that which applies to trees, shrubs, and bedding. 

 Well-drained, rich, and mellow soil is alike congenial to all. 



As to the best method of arranging herbaceous plants 

 and the most suitable site for a flower garden, I shall take 



