50 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



SO many good qualities — individual beauty of flowers ; great 

 effectiveness in the garden, shrubbery, or border ; good foliage at 

 all seasons ; a long season of bloom, and flowers that will endure 

 a degree of frost that destroys almost everything else. Its only 

 limitation is that it will not thrive in light sandy soil, but in a 

 heavy, rich soil it grows with great vigor. I have often seen it 

 five feet high and that too in places where it had been naturalized 

 and received no attention after planting. 



Why is it that single Hollyhocks are not offered for sale or 

 grown by nurserymen and plantsmen? Surely they are the most 

 stately, picturesque, and decorative herbaceous plants in cultiva- 

 tion, and I have never met anybody who did not greatly admire 

 them, but as far as I know they cannot be bought — not even the 

 seed. The single sorts were always very much finer than the 

 highly cultivated double sorts, whose culture has been made 

 difficult of late on account of the hollyhock disease. On the 

 contrary the single varieties are of the easiest culture, and once 

 established will take care of themselves in almost any location. 



Equally neglected are the old-fashioned and really hardy 

 Chrysanthemums, which are still to be found in an occasional 

 garden. I know these chrysanthemums would cut but a poor 

 figure in the exhibitions and florists' windows, but they have far 

 more gardening value than all the hundreds of new varieties 

 introduced in the last few years, which can only be grown in 

 perfection by the skillful florist or by the amateur who has all the 

 facilities of the florist. 



The numerous fine exhibitions of chrysanthemums every fall are 

 very enjoyable but I fail to see that they have helped gardening 

 any, except that of a very limited class. On the contrary, out- 

 door gardening has been retarded by the disappointment of 

 thousands of people who have tried to grow the exhibition pets in 

 their gardens. 



In a recent number of "Garden and Forest," Mr. Gerard has 

 very properly called attention to the possible field for the hybrid- 

 izer in improving really hardy chrysanthemums for garden 

 purposes, and in a later number a writer takes exceptions to his 

 remarks, claiming that the flowers are always damaged by frost 

 and that their habit is straggling and poor as compared with the 

 improved greenhouse varieties. 



Now, I think we have all seen chrysanthemums in farmhouse 

 yards and village gardens that have endured for years, and that 



