My Ambition Grows 35 



bloom. Some take a year or two to get established after being 

 transplanted; others, just as they are about to bloom, get 

 some infantile disease like the blight of the larkspur, and all 

 is up with them for that year. I pray and water those beds 

 with my tears, but supplication is in vain. Theoretically my 

 arrangement last summer was perfect; but what can one re- 

 sort to when larkspurs fail, when the Japanese iris is all leaf 

 (it used to have glorious crowns of bloom before it was trans- 

 planted), the Siberian iris multiplies, but otherwise balks, the 

 two-year-old Pentstemon grandiflorus remains an obstinate 

 little green clump, the Catananche and Wahlenbergia follow 

 the Pentstemon's bad example, the Lobelia syphilitica is eaten 

 down by a cutworm, and the blue and purple asters get 

 caught between the upper and nether stone of the annual 

 drought. What avails it that the lovely white Physostegia, 

 Chrysanthemum maximum, meadow rue, infant's breath, wild 

 carrot, achillea, garden heliotrope, Hesperis matronalis, peren- 

 nial white phlox, all planted as accessories to give grace and 

 airiness to the heavier blue tones, do their part bravely the 

 bed is distinctly white, not blue, save for early blue spring 

 flowers gone by June, monkshood and campanula of July, 

 the Veronica spicata of July and August, and the lilac Physos- 

 tegia, Liatris and Michaelmas daisies of August and Septem- 

 ber. I love these plants, and want to get a definite color effect 

 through them, and I do not want to compromise by substitut- 

 ing quantities of annuals ; cornflower, nigella, anchusa, nemo- 

 phila, annual larkspur, Phacelia, Eutoca viscida, just because 

 they are a rich blue. To arrange blue perennials, so that they 

 will present a succession of bloom from May to October in the 

 same bed, is the high ideal I aim to reach, and I seem likely to 

 give my remaining years to the study. Incidentally I find com- 

 binations that are beautiful such as white Physostegia Vir- 

 giniana and Veronica spicata; German Iris and white col- 



