THE CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST. 



65 



HARDY PERENNIAL PLANTS. 



{Read at the recent winter meeting of the Fruit-Growers' 

 Association of Ontario.) 



I wish to bring before the Associa- 

 tion the importance of encouraging the 

 cultivation of liardy perennial plants 

 for the garden. The old system of 

 raising annuals and tender bedding out 

 stuff every year is both troublesome 

 and unsatisfactory, and to those who 

 have no proper houses or frames for 

 propagating it is also expensive, as they 

 have no other means of filling their 

 borders except by purchase ; and to 

 those situated in the country this is 

 not always possible. The mania for 

 gaudy bedding and carpet work is 

 happily dying out, and a taste for the 

 beautiful Alpines and other hardy 

 classes of jiei'ennials is taking its pro- 

 per place. To my mind there is some- 

 thing in the individuality of the beau- 

 tiful spring bulbs and Alpines that 

 quite casts into the sliade all the ribbon 

 and carpet bedding of the fashionable 

 garden. From early spring till late in 

 fall a continual succession of flowers 

 can be obtained from the hardy garden 

 without the annoyance of raising the 

 young plants every year, and watching 

 the weather for a favorable time after 

 the late spring frosts are over for their 

 bedding out. Then again some of 

 them are hardly well into flower when 

 the dreaded early fall frosts come, and 

 the work of the summer is destroyed 

 in a night. Not so with the hardy 

 garden. In the eai-ly spring the 

 Snowdrops, Crocus, Snowflakes, Scil- 

 las, Narcissus, Hyacinths, &c., fol- 

 lowed by other spring and summer 

 flowering plants in rapid succession, 

 keep the borders gay all the time. 

 While the hardy gai-den must be 

 ill a great measure filled with for- 

 eigners, yet there are many natives 

 that are equally as well worthy of cul- 

 tivation ; in fact, so much is this the 

 case, that in Europe a garden of any 



pretentions without a border for Am- 

 erican plants and shrubs would be 

 looked iipon as wanting in one of its 

 greatest attractions. They consider 

 our Cypripediuuis, spectabile and pu- 

 bescens, as the most magnificent herba- 

 ceous plants in cultivation. Then we 

 have the Ti-illiums or Wood Lilies, 

 Liliums, Hepaticas, Erythronium, 

 Sanguinaria or Bloodroot, Asclepias, 

 Aquilegias, Violas, several species of 

 Phlox, Lobelias, Gentians, Asters, and 

 an innumerable number of other things 

 which would look well in any garden. 

 With these and a proper selection of 

 plants of foreign birth, no garden need 

 be without a good display of flowers 

 from eai'ly spring till late in the fall. 



It would extend this paper too much 

 to go over a long list of names which 

 can be got out of any descriptive cata- 

 logue. I will only mention a few 

 natives, some of which should be found 

 in every garden. If some florist or 

 nurseryman would take to growing and 

 putting on the market a good selection 

 of perennials, he would be doing a 

 good work, and no doubt it would go 

 far to create and perpetuate a taste for 

 hardy garden plants, which once ac- 

 quired will never be given up while 

 life lasts. In preparing a border for 

 perennial plants it is of as much im- 

 portance to have it deeply dug or 

 trenched as it is for any vegetable crop 

 whatever. If possible, incorporate 

 some leaf mould and a small portion of 

 very rotten manure, and if the land is 

 heavy a quantity of sharp sand will be 

 an improvement. 



Most bulbs require a good, rich, 

 deep soil. Hyacinths, for instance, 

 cannot be grown to perfection without 

 plenty of manure and depth of soil, 

 and when once a bed of them is 

 planted under these conditions they 

 will last for several years without fur- 

 ther care, except to give them a good 

 mulching with well rotted manure every 



