20 VARIETY IN THE LITTLE GARDEN 



well, fatally well, where such descriptions send me. Headlong I 

 rush for W. R. Dykes's little volume on the iris in the "Present- 

 Day Gardening Series." I take down the same writer's great 

 work. The Genus Iris, with the magnificent color plates; I get 

 out my lists from dealers where the very names themselves give 

 color and beauty to the page. I betake myself to the literature 

 of the American Iris Society and, as Mr. Phillpotts says, my 

 lawful heirs are likely to try to prevent the posting of the written 

 orders that ensue ! 



In Mr. Sidney M. Colgate's garden, mentioned in chapter I, 

 Iris pallida dalmatica grows in association with a bluish lupine, 

 and one of the flame-colored varieties of oriental poppy, such as 

 Mary Studholme or Kaiserin Augusta Victoria, also helps to 

 make a picture here in June flowers. Stachys lanata gives a gray 

 foreground to these at each edge nearest the paved walks, and 

 later bloom before and back of the irises is well provided for. 



Two gardens entirely devoted to the iris are well known to 

 American amateurs. One is in one of the main-line suburbs of 

 Philadelphia, where in a most lovely countryside, circular gar- 

 dens devoted to this extraordinarily handsome flower stand on 

 dififerent levels, and where the irises, far from being planted at 

 haphazard, are grouped in masses according to type, color, and 

 period of bloom. This is as fine and complete a collection as any 

 that we boast, and from every standpoint has a value. The 

 other is a garden of these flowers at Shrewsbury, near Worces- 

 ter, Massachusetts. Here the mistress of the garden, who 

 loves the iris above all other things that bloom, grows it not 

 only in ordered beds and borders in a well-planned formal gar- 

 den, but sends it streaming ofiF along a brookside, with grass 

 walks separating its broad masses from each other. There is 

 even an iris cut upon the surface of the stone sundial in that 

 garden's midst. 



