INTRODUCTORY 3 



good harmonies possible, and different situations call for different plants 

 to fit them, so besides those which are preeminently the garden favorites, 

 many other well-deserving plants have been included, to supply, if 

 possible, some capable candidate to fill each particular vacancy that may 

 arise. 



HOW TO USE THE CHARTS 



In arranging the charts the plants have been placed in the order 

 of their heights, beginning with the tallest, for this is the first quality 

 that concerns us in our garden pictures. If we want something for the 

 back of the border we use the top part of the Hst; if something for an edg- 

 ing, the bottom end. The last column to the right indicates by the length 

 of the black bars the average heights of the various plants. Of course, 

 this is necessarily only an approximation, for the height of any plant will 

 vary, with a range of two or more feet for the taller ones, according to the 

 soil and situation; and even the same individual specimen may change 

 considerably from year to year. But in any case the order of height here 

 given will be always very nearly the same, and that is the thing that 

 most concerns us. 



Next in order of importance come color and the season of bloom, and 

 these will be found indicated in the columns of colored bars on the green 

 background. Here also there is of necessity an approximation, the dif- 

 ferent flowers on the same plant may vary perceptibly in color, and 

 many flowers comprise several colors within themselves. The ordinary 

 Daisy, for example, is both white and yellow, but at a little distance the 

 white so predominates that the yellow centre is lost. Therefore the color 

 given on the chart is the color which a mass of each flower in question will 

 usually present when seen from a little distance. Some of the color 

 patches are graded, ranging, say, from pink to white and then to blue; 

 this signifies that that particular flower can be had in any one of the tints 

 included in that color scale. As for the period of bloom given, that is 

 calculated for the neighborhood of Philadelphia, latitude 40 degrees 

 north, and, roughly, the season for any point of the Atlantic States may be 

 calculated by pushing it back six days for each degree farther north or 

 forward for each one farther south. Thus New York City would be about 

 five and Boston fifteen days later, and Washington about a week earlier. 

 In any locality, however, the sequence and approximately the length of 

 bloom here given will hold good, and that again is the important thing. 



Now suppose our garden picture should require a plant of medium 

 height blooming late in July and blue in color. The column headed 



