40 VARIETY IN THE LITTLE GARDEN 



venosa, with a pretty graceful habit of growth and a small but 

 rich purple head of flowers. This comes from Argentina, and 

 begins to bloom in August. Collinsia bicolor, the little annual 

 mentioned above, flowered with us this summer for the first 

 time. It is a plant about eight inches tall with flowers of lilac 

 and white, exceedingly attractive. This is offered in some of 

 our seed-lists and everyone should try it, though to get the 

 pure lilac-and-white variety one might have to send to England, 

 for I see only mixed colors offered here. Send to England for it; 

 a two-cent stamp will bring a good English seed-list to your 

 door; and if we buy a few novelties from England now and then, 

 our own dealers will be very apt to enlarge their own variety 

 in the near future. Let us spur them on their way. 



Not a syllable have I written thus far concerning such plants 

 as annual white cosmos, the dwarf early variety, so nice near 

 Lavatera Loveliness, sweet with deep pink flowers. Do not let 

 the so-called pink cosmos venture near this Lavatera or mallow. 

 If you do, both flowers will suffer, as well as your own harmony- 

 loving eye. If you must have the cool pink of this cosmos in 

 your border, see to it that some lavender or purple hardy asters, 

 such as aster amellus elegans or aster Feltham Blue, or Lil 

 Fardell bloom near by. It is with these flowers that the pink 

 cosmos is perfect, as is the cold pink of the Japanese anemone, 

 that perennial so welcome in the autumn, but whose roots may 

 be transplanted only in the spring. 



Variety in perennials is a subject inexhaustible. From those 

 that are now being made known to America by the great soci- 

 eties that bear their names — Peony and Iris — to those other 

 flowers not called perennials, but which once grown or bought 

 go on flowering, like the dahlia, the rose, the gladiolus — the 

 American public is certainly awake to flowers in variety as 

 never before. Merchants and bankers are becoming specialists 



