236 PERENNIALS 



flowers. He invented this idea for the special benefit of plants 

 that are beautiful when in bloom, but otherwise unfit for borders 

 or showy gardens. 



For example, we do not take our perennial asters seriously, but 

 the English do. I know one English nurseryman who offers one 

 hundred and thirty-seven kinds of American asters. We give little 

 thought to improving our native wild flowers, but the English culti- 

 vate forty-five varieties of the New York aster alone (Aster Novi- 

 Belgii). Some robust kinds multiply too fast for a border, but the 

 finer sorts are often grown in famous show gardens. What Ameri- 

 can would ever take the trouble to stake asters ? If we do we are 

 likely to make them tight and bunchy. The English will sometimes 

 use branches carefully cut in such a way as to be entirely invisible 

 and yet hold out these great sprays of cloudy bloom in more than 

 native airiness and elegance. One lady had two borders set apart 

 for "Michaelmas daisies," as the English call them one for asters 

 of the finest colours and another for the strong purples and other 

 colours that ordinarily clash. The latter she harmonized by using 

 plenty of white asters. 



The English do not despise plants with coarse or weedy foliage, 

 provided they have the pictorial quality. With us mulleins are 

 a by-word and a jest. But the English cultivate fully twenty 

 species of them. The great golden candelabra of the Grecian 

 mullein (V. Olympicum), borne on plants six to ten feet high, make 

 a stirring spectacle. Many mulleins have noble rosettes of huge 

 silvery leaves. And breeders have improved the old purple 

 mullein (V. phceniceum) until it now has a fairly good pink in 

 addition to violet, lilac, rose, white, and copper colour. 



How little imagination we exercise toward plants whose chief 

 fault is that they are easy to grow! For example, many Americans 



