VARIETY IN ANNUAL FLOWERS 31 



the geranium. It is almost mmecessary — but not quite — to 

 add that the lavenders and violets of all the flowers used should 

 be particularly clear, not muddy or uncertain, and that the 

 scarlets should be flaming ones. 



For a long time it has been the fashion among good amateur 

 gardeners to condemn the geranium as a flower for gardens. 

 The reason is that for many years nothing had been seen in 

 public gardens, and in some private ones, but the scarlet gera- 

 nium with the canna and the scarlet sage. It was this bad use 

 of the geranium that was its undoing. So it has been with the 

 canna till just now, when a new time seems to be approaching 

 for these flowers. In watching the ordinary canna-plantings 

 of this country, I have come to look for their accomplices, — 

 scarlet salvias, blue spruces, golden-leaved shrubs, — all that 

 array of stuff which those who do not stand high as landscape- 

 gardeners (and how many these are to-day, when the art is 

 taught by correspondence courses, or supposed to be learned in 

 the nursery business) palm off upon the public. The round bed 

 of canras bespeaks a third-rate taste in gardening. Most of 

 this type of the use of the canna in our towns is due to certain 

 florists' books w^hich to this day show forth designs for plantings 

 of detached round beds of these plants; some of our best seeds- 

 men too still publish such plans for bulbs. It is a pity! It is a 

 great chance for beauty, missed. The florist teaches his men 

 to use these designs; our city parks are filled with the results; 

 the wrong object lesson is given to a neighborhood; the wrong 

 thing spreads like wildfire. 



Many small railway stations have rectangular parks, sup- 

 posed to be well set off by a circle of cannas, scarlet and yellow. 

 These beds are probably copied in the town by the Carnegie 

 Library, the Towm Hall, the village park, the individual house- 

 holder. One of the two powerful trade journals of this country. 



