4 How to Make a Flower Garden 



select. There is no emphasis and no modulation in such a scheme. There 

 should be major and minor keys. 



The minor keys may be of almost any kind of plant. Since these plants 

 are semi-experimental, it does not matter if some of them fail outright. 

 Why not begin the list at A and buy as many as you can afford and can 

 accommodate this year, then continue the list next year? In five or ten 

 years you will have grown the alphabet, and will have learned as much 

 horticulture and botany as most persons learn in a college course. And 

 some of these plants will become your permanent friends. 



F'or the main and bold effects I want something that I can depend on. 

 There I do not want to experiment. Never fill a conspicuous place with a 

 kind of plant that you have never grown. 



The kinds I like best are the ones easiest to grow. My personal equation, 

 I suppose, determines this. Zinnia, petunia, marigold, four-o'clock, sun- 

 flower, phlox, scabiosa, sweet sultan, bachelor's-button, verbena, calendula, 

 calliopsis, morning-glory, nasturtium, sweet pea — these are some of the 

 kinds that are surest, and least attacked by bugs and fungi. I do not 

 know where the investment of fi\'e cents will bring as great reward as in a 

 packet of seeds of any of these plants. 



Before one sets out to grow these or any other plants he must make for 

 himself an ideal. Will he grow for a garden effect, or for specimen plants or 

 specimen blooms ? If for specimens, then each plant must have plenty of 

 room and receive particular individual care. If for garden effect, then see 

 to it that the entire space is solidly covered, and that you have a con- 

 tinuous blaze of colour. Usually the specimen plants would best be grown 

 in a side garden, as vegetables are, where they can be tilled, trained, and 

 severally cared for. 



There is really a third ideal, and I hope that some of you may try it — 

 to grow all the varieties of one species. You really do not know what the 

 China aster or the balsam is until you have seen all the kinds of it. Suppose 

 that you ask your seedsman to send you one packet of every variety of 

 cockscomb that he has. Next year you may want to try stocks or annual 

 poppies, or something else. All this will be a study in evolution. 



There is still a fourth ideal — the growing for gathering or "picking." 

 If you want many flowers for house decoration and to give away, then grow 

 them at one side in regular rows as you would potatoes or sweet corn. Culti- 

 vate them by horse- or wheel-hoe. Harvest them in the same spirit that 



