40 HARDY BORDERS 



hidden. And the acme of refinement is to interlace the colonies 

 at their edges, so that the colours do not resemble so many separate 

 daubs on a palette. It is easy to indicate on the plan just how 

 to do it. For instance, suppose colonies I and 2 lie next each 

 other, and you wish to tie them together. In the first colony 

 write the figure 2 in about three places near the edge; and in the 

 second colony put the figure I at about three places near the edge. 

 ^ If you wish to keep your hardy border up to the high standard 

 here indicated for as long a period as two months you must be pre- 

 pared to have "fillers" ready in pots, and to adopt two 

 other devices for securing an unbroken succession of bloom. 

 One is "pulling down" which can be practised with unreasonably 

 tall flowers like sunflowers and golden glow, thus transforming 

 them from tall and narrow plants into medium-sized roundish 

 masses that are covered with bloom. The other is to study com- 



' 3" 



binations of plants that naturally supplement one another. For 



i 



example, Gypsophila paniculata will cover the ground after Oriental 

 poppies have lost their leaves, and later the brown seed-spray of 

 gypsophila can be obscured by climbing nasturtiums. 



The great objection to the system outlined above is that it 

 makes of garden design a fine art, and therefore calls for life-long 

 devotion on the part of conscientious and well-trained workers. 

 Not one flower lover in a thousand can realize such an ideal. For 

 the ordinary person such a border as that at Sutton Place is "plenty 

 good enough." I was tempted to have a hundred pictures of it 

 taken say three a week, from spring to fall in order to show 

 the wonderful variety there is in any hardy border as opposed to 

 the bedding system. But that would have been too easy a victory. 

 I decided to have eight pictures taken under serious limitations 

 all on one day, and in this single, narrow, straight-edged border. 



