262 Old Time Gardens 



is pleasant to plant common Flax, if you have ample 

 room ; it is a superb blue ; to many persons the 

 blossom is unfamiliar, and is always of interest. Its 

 lovely flowers have been much sung in English 

 verse. The Salpiglossis, shown on the opposite 

 page, is in its azure tint a lovely flower, though it is 

 a kinsman of the despised Petunia. 



How the Campanulaceae enriched the beauty and 

 the blueness of the garden. We had our splendid 

 clusters of Canterbury Bells, both blue and white. 

 I have told elsewhere of our love for them in child- 

 hood. Equally dear to us was a hardy old Campan- 

 ula whose full name I know not, perhaps it is the 

 Pyramidalis; it is shown on page 263, the very 

 plant my mother set out, still growing and bloom- 

 ing; nothing in the garden is more gladly welcomed 

 from year to year. It partakes of the charm shared 

 by every bell-shaped flower, a simple form, but an 

 ever pleasing one. We had also the Campanula 

 persicifolia and trachelium, and one we called Blue- 

 bells of Scotland, which was not the correct name. 

 It now has died out, and no one recalls enough of 

 its exact detail to learn its real name. The showiest 

 bell-flower was the Platycodon grandifiorum, the Chi- 

 nese or Japanese Bell-flower, shown on page 264. 

 Another name is the Balloon-flower, this on account 

 of the characteristic buds shaped like an inflated bal- 

 loon. It is a lovely blue in tint, though this photo- 

 graph was taken from a white-flowered plant in the 

 white border at Indian Hill. The Giant Bell-flower 

 is a fin de siecle blossom named Ostrowskia, with 

 flowers four inches deep and six inches in diameter; 



