PERENNIALS 229 



a catalogue, select the flowers you love best, and arrange the plants 

 after they come. The best way is to draw a diagram of the border 

 to scale, dividing it into five-foot sections, so that you can locate 

 every plant on paper. Next you make a list of the months and 

 ask yourself, "What shall be my main reliance in June, in July, 

 and so on?" Thus you decide on your big masses first and the 

 "fillers" last as any artist does. The most pictorial borders 

 are designed in this way in England, and it is thought best to have 

 only one mass of the dominant flower for each period, instead of 

 repeating that flower in the same border. 



Peonies are certainly the showiest border flowers in early 

 June (or after the German iris) and double peonies are more 

 massive than single ones. The best possible associates for peonies 

 are lilies not the madonna, but really permanent ones that 

 bloom later elegans, Henryi, and speciosum. By using these 

 bulbs as fillers you hide the deficiencies of the peonies and get two 

 crops of flowers in the same bed. 



The peony and lily idea is now familiar in America, but I 

 have never seen peonies used in America for wild gardening. At 

 first the idea seems absurd, because double flowers cannot possibly 

 look wild when viewed near by. But if you put peonies at the 

 edge of a wood at so great a distance that you cannot distinguish 

 form and can only enjoy their colour, they make a wonderful, 

 effect, especially in the early morning, at twilight, or when they 

 light some dark corner. I should like to see this notion tried on 

 some great estate in America. I believe the painters would like 

 it. The horticultural justification for this idea is that peonies 

 are about as long lived as shrubs. 



After the peonies, the next showy flower is the perennial 

 larkspur. It is certainly the queen of the border in July. The 



