38 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The popularity of bedding plants is happily ou the wane ; it 

 occurs to almost everybody after a time that they do not get much 

 for their money when they buy this sort of material, but I cannot 

 say that hardy plants are gaining much. There is no considerable 

 effort made to attract the public attention to their merits, and when 

 some man, more enterprising than his neighbors, does take the 

 trouble to hunt them up and do his gardening with them the 

 result is not always happy. He is very apt to use them as he 

 would bedding plants — that is, in formal beds cut out of the 

 grass of the lawn. Of course hardy plants do not lend themselves 

 to this treatment, and it is one of their greatest merits that they do 

 not. Better no flowers at all than that the lawn should be cut up 

 in formal beds for their accommodation. 



An objection often urged against hardy plants is their short 

 duration of bloom, but this really is one of their greatest merits. 

 Let us consider the garden that depends exclusively upon bedding 

 plants for its decoration. It is usually the first of June before 

 they can be planted, and it is well into July before they are 

 effective, and often by the end of September they are killed by 

 frost, and every day during their short season of three months they 

 are as unchanging in appearance as the carpets in our houses and 

 about as interesting. 



On the contrary, the well planned and well planted garden of 

 hardy plants begins its season with earliest spring and terminates 

 it not with the first light frosts of fall but when November brings 

 some real winter weather, and then only goes to rest to delight us 

 afresh with the coming of another spring. Almost every day 

 throughout its long season the hardy garden is changing with the 

 changes of the season, something new is coming into bloom, and 

 before it becomes monotonous its season is over and its place 

 taken by some other flower equally beautiful and interesting but 

 entirely different. Our garden is never tiresome, its' past is a 

 pleasant memory, its future a delightful anticipation, and its 

 bloom an accurate calendar of the seasons. Is this true or only 

 fanciful writing? It is true, every word of it — hard but pleasant 

 facts. 



Snowdrops are in bloom with the first pleasant weather in 

 spring ; last spring they were in bloom during the first week in 

 March. They are quickly followed by scillas and crocuses, and 

 then comes the season of tulips and narcissuses, with their count- 



