36 HARDY BORDERS 



first things I did on reaching England was to inquire where I could 

 see a flower border like that of Frank Miles. I was informed 

 that Miss Gertrude Jekyll was believed to have the most perfect 

 borders of their kind in England. I might have armed myself 

 with letters of introduction, but I have no desire to intrude upon 

 the privacy of one who publicly declares that she is "growing old 

 and tired, and suffers from very bad and painful sight." And 

 there is no need of any one's seeing her garden because no one could 

 possibly get from a single visit a hundredth part of what her latest 

 book contains. "Colour in the Flower Garden," it seems to me, 

 carries the art of designing hardy borders to a point far beyond 

 anything previously written. 



"It has taken me half a lifetime," says Miss Jekyll, "merely 

 to find out what is best worth doing." Many people get their 

 pleasure from .collecting rare plants. Some prefer to make cut 

 flowers the main feature. Others desire gardens that are merely 

 decorative adjuncts of the house, i. e., gardens for show. But 

 the supreme pleasure, Miss Jekyll thinks, comes from designing 

 a garden that is a "year-long succession of living pictures." 



There is only one way of accomplishing this, in her opinion, 

 and that is by dividing the whole estate into a dozen portions or 

 more, each one of which is assigned a different period for its per- 

 fection. Thus she has one border for March effect, which con- 

 tains snowdrops, crocuses, scillas, and the like. She has a spring 

 garden devoted to April and the first three weeks of May, which 

 includes tulips and daffodils coming through carpets of rock cress 

 and creeping phlox. She has a "hidden garden" for the last 

 days of May and first half of June (the period between tulips and 

 irises), in which alpine flowers and tree peonies are a feature. 

 She has a June garden, which is rich in roses, irises, and lupines. 



