HARDY PLANTS AND SHRUBS. 37 



There has been so much written and said on the subject, and the 

 great advantages of gardening with hardy plants and sln-ubs are 

 so apparent, as compared with tender bedding plants, that it seems 

 a waste of time and words to make any argument in favor of one 

 and against the other, but the argument is needed as much as ever, 

 for it is an undeniable fact that nine-tenths of the ornamental 

 gardening in America is still done with a few commonplace and 

 uninteresting bedding plants. Think of the pity of it, that all this 

 enormous annual expenditure should be wasted — an expenditure 

 that leaves our gardens in the fall exactly as it found them in the 

 spring, bare earth and nothing in it. 



Is it because the people prefer bedding plants to hardy ones? 

 You who know hardy plants know that this is not so. Who would 

 prefer, let us say, a bed of coleuses or geraniums to a fine group of 

 rhododendrons, or azaleas, or Auratum lilies, or Japanese 

 anemones, or to the hundreds of fine things to be had in hardy 

 shrubs and plants? Any one of these has a beauty incomparably 

 greater than can be produced with the most lavish use of bedding 

 plants. Then the bedding plants are a yearly expense, while an 

 investment in hardy plants and shrubs returns the investor an 

 annual dividend in increased size and loveliness. Every dollar 

 spent for them secures a permanent addition to the garden, and 

 the time soon comes when the annual outla}' can be devoted 

 entirely to care and culture. 



I know a gentleman who carried a fine stalk of Auratum lily 

 flowers into the oflice of one of the largest business houses in our 

 city. Not a man in the office knew what it was, and all were 

 unwilling to believe that it grew in his garden. They supposed it 

 to be some rare and costly flower grown in a conservatory. Yet 

 Auratum lilies and dozens of other things as fine can now be 

 bought as cheaply as bedding plants. 



The people do not prefer bedding plants to hardy ones. They 

 have no choice in the matter. They buy what the local florist 

 offers and what they see in their neighbors' gardens. They are 

 not sufficiently interested to make inquiries. They do not read the 

 gardening papers, and with few exceptions the managers of the 

 city parks, who should be such educators of the people in garden- 

 ing, are content with what might be called an annual pyrotechnical 

 display of bedding plants as it is of such short duration and little 

 artistic value. 



