HARDY PLANTS AND SHRUBS. 51 



have, without any special culture, produced an annual mass of 

 very satisfactory (lowers and foliage, and there is no doubt that 

 the flowers of these sorts will go through considerable frost and 

 snow without tarnishing. 



These chr3'santhemums are certainly useful material for the 

 hybridizer, but for the present we shall be very well satisfied if 

 some enterprising nurser3'men will collect from old gardens such 

 varieties as now exist and give us the opportunity^ of using them 

 in our gai'dens. 



Before I conclude I wish to give aspecial word of praise to 

 my favorite shrub, Kalmia laiifolia, which is known in Pennsyl- 

 vania, where it is very common in the woods, as the small-leaved 

 mountain laurel. It is greatly admired as a wild flower, and an 

 occasional unsuccessful attempt is made to transplant it from the 

 woods, but nurserymen have made no attempt to introduce it into 

 general culture, and it is somewhat curious that it is necessary to 

 send to England to get fine specimens of this distinctively 

 American plant. Excepting odor, it has every good quality that 

 a shrub can have — evergreen foliage and good habit, great 

 quantity of durable bloom, extreme daintiness and beaut}^ of 

 indisidual flowers, and usefulness as cut flowers. If the flowers 

 are cut just as the buds are about to open and placed in water 

 they will last for two weeks in the house, and if arranged with 

 taste nothing is more decorative. 



In one of his books Donald G. Mitchell suggests that the 

 Kalmia would probably make an excellent hedge. I have never 

 seen it tried but I am confident that it would — perhaps as fine as 

 the holly hedges in England, and, with a little discretion in trim- 

 ming, a hedge of it could be made to produce a fine crop of bloom 

 at least every other season. 



With nursery-grown plants to start with, the Kalmia is of the 

 easiest culture, requiring no special soil or location, and it is 

 perfectly hardy. Like all evergreen shrubs it should be trans- 

 planted in the spring. 



All the hardy plants I have named, with two or three exceptions, 

 will thrive with ordinai-y garden culture, and some of them without 

 any attention after planting, but as they are usually planted where 

 they are to remain for years it would be well to make the initial 

 preparation of the soil for them a liberal one. I usually specify 

 that borders for hardy plants should have two feet of good friable 



