PEAT GARDENS 81 



across; in June, the tall yellow iris with flowers five inches across; 

 in early July, Japan iris in many colours, with flowers six to nine 

 inches across; in late July, the purple cone-flower, with flowers 

 five inches across; in August, Lilium superbum growing eight 

 feet high and bearing thirty flowers, each four inches across; 

 in August and September, the swamp rose mallow, Crimson 

 Eye hibiscus and Mallow Marvels, with flowers five to eight 

 inches across. 



If this is not enough, you can have many flowers that are 

 smaller individually, but equally showy in mass, e. g., the purple 

 loosestrife (see plate 35), cardinal flower, bee balm, sneezeweed, 

 swamp milkweed, turtle head, Chelone Lyoni, etc. 



Some of these will do fairly well in ordinary gardens, 

 but it is only in wet soil that they attain superb proportions 

 and are splendid beyond words. For example, the purple loose- 

 strife in the salt meadows grows only two or three feet high, 

 and bears perhaps a dozen spikes. In the bog garden or by 

 the water side, where it is released from the struggle for exist- 

 ence, it may grow six to ten feet high, forming gigantic clumps 



I 



and bearing thousands of spikes, as at Barrytown, N. Y., and 

 Holm Lea. 



There is no book on peat gardening. In this chapter I can 

 mention only the broadest features of this unique style. The mate- 

 rials for bog gardening are discussed in Chapter XXIII. For the 

 construction, of bog gardens the best work I know is Chapter 

 XXII of Robinson's "English Flower Garden." The best article 

 I have seen in any American periodical is "The Two Kinds of 

 Bog Garden," which Mr. Warren H. Manning wrote for Country 

 Life in America for August, 1908. Plants for peat gardens are easy 

 enough to get. There are half a dozen American nurserymen who 



