HARDY FLOWER CULTURE. 83 



represent the extent of hardy flower culture. The collection has 

 its place but it cannot be made a strong feature of the garden. 

 If our aim is to create pictures in the garden landscape, effects of 

 color, distinctive features in different parts, selections not col- 

 lections must be the rule. As soon as we depart from the collec- 

 tive method and take up the selective the availability of hardy 

 flow^ers for garden decoration is enormously increased. For ex- 

 ample, take some special class of plants suited to a chosen spot, 

 both from a cultural standpoint and with relation to effect in the 

 garden landscape. Thoroughly prepare the situation and plant it 

 and you can create a flower feature that will stand for Ave to ten 

 years with only the ordinary care of keeping free from weeds. 



An iris garden. Suppose w^e decide to make an iris garden. 

 Here is a family w^orthy of ten times the attention it gets in the 

 ordinary garden, and no matter how^ much space you have at 

 command, you can plant half an acre or more, if the space justifies 

 so extensive a planting, and yet show difference of variety in everj'- 

 square rod but fitness of association throughout the whole arrange- 

 ment. Instead of a mixed medley of everything that flow^ers at 

 iris time, consider irises only and see what the family has available 

 for such planting. You are familiar with them ; you will concede 

 irises in point of beauty stand related to all other hardy flowers, 

 as the Cattleyas do to the orchid family, peerless and unsurpass- 

 able in form, color, effect, the highest type of attainable flower 

 beauty. 



Do you know that you can have an iris garden that will give 

 you profuse and unbroken succession of lovehness from April well 

 on into July, and that too without using the family in its entirety, 

 as some types, like the cushion irises and the bulbous class, need 

 separate special treatment. You must have seen some of our mead- 

 ows blue with native iris in groups of an acre or more, a fine dis- 

 play at flowering time but of one species only. 



In the iris garden we can have an early beginning, a continu- 

 ous succession, and a late ending. An appropriate setting to, and 

 background for, an iris garden is a belt or plantation of shrubs, 

 planting the irises in bold groups in well-prepared soil in the 

 foreground. The dwarf growers are the early bloomers, and 

 height of growth and time of flowering are in such perfect har- 

 mony there need be nothing incongruous in the arrangement. 



