52 GARDENING WITH BRAINS 1? 



elor's buttons — suppose you make a crazy quilt 

 of this dozen the first year. The next season 

 you are likely to want whole beds of some of 

 them, particularly verbenas and cosmoses. I 

 always have a separate bed of cornflowers 

 around the stem of a locust tree. They seed 

 themselves, begin to bloom before any other 

 annual, and, if given a few handfuls of wood 

 ashes before rain or an occasional shower bath, 

 will bloom four or five months. The greedy 

 tree rootlets do not kill them. I have known 

 cornflowers to survive several decades self-sown 

 in an Oregon apple orchard. They are patriotic, 

 too, with their red, white, and blue flowers. 

 I prefer the single kind, but grow also the 

 doubles because of their different colors. Corn- 

 flowers have an agreeable perfume, but it is so 

 faint that it probably escapes many who nose 

 it. It would be easy to intensify this fragrance 

 by continuous selection of the sweetest flowers 

 for seed. Nothing could be simpler. In view of 

 the wide popularity of cornflowers it would 

 surely pay our seedsmen to do this work. 

 They should also take in hand the ''poor man's 

 orchid" (schizanthus) , whose quaint blossoms, 

 varying from blond to dark brunette, are always 

 in my garden. They are seldom fragrant, but 

 should be made so. 



Of course you will have the equally patriotic 

 morning-glories climbing somewhere in your 

 grounds. These will do well anywhere — even in 



