THE PRACTICAL FLOWER GARDEN 



the hybrid teas, and the phlox, more particu- 

 larly the white and light varieties. No one 

 knows why mildew should appear upon 

 plants grown in full sun, when it is a disease 

 supposed to appear only in shady places or 

 after a considerable period of very warm, 

 damp weather. Mildew increases with mush- 

 room-like rapidity. An instance of this oc- 

 curred in the great phlox border in my garden 

 late last June. I had been away for two days 

 only. All of this time the men had been 

 employed at the other end of the place, and 

 no one had made a daily tour, with the keen 

 lookout for trouble that is as necessary in 

 the flower garden as in the nursery of young 

 children, and upon returning home late in 

 the afternoon I made, as is customary after 

 an absence, a careful tour of the place, when 

 to my amazement and horror I found that 

 several .clumps, of probably fifty each, of my 

 loveliest variety of pale pink phlox were so 

 covered with mildew as to resemble giant 

 plants of dusty miller. Early the next morn- 



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