April Making Ready for Summer 



plant that thrives the better the more drastically you 

 treat it, so when the blossoms are past cut it hard back ; 

 it will soon grow freely enough again, and probably 

 bloom all the better next year. 



A Little Bog Garden that was made at the foot of 

 a fence facing north a year or two ago gets more gay 

 every day. The showy little Primulas frondosa and 

 rosea and the taller cortusoides are in brilliant bloom; 

 Primula japonica is lusty of leaf and getting ready to 

 send up stout flower stems, and hardy Cypripediums are 

 peeping through the moist peat. I cannot imagine a 

 more satisfactory way of dealing with a cool and shady 

 spot than by making a little bog garden of it. 



The Flame Flower. The Flame Flower (Tropaeolum 

 speciosum) is perhaps the most brilliant of all hardy 

 climbing plants, but it is unfortunately one of the most 

 difficult to grow in Southern gardens. In colder Northern 

 counties one sees it draping cottage garden walls with 

 its exquisite greenery and wonderful scarlet blossoms, 

 apparently without any care on the part of the gardener. 

 The finest specimen I have seen in the Southern counties 

 was in a garden at Bath; it was planted on the north 

 side of a tall yew hedge and had clambered through the 

 latter to a height of many feet. The chief essentials to 

 success appear to be coolness and a leafy soil. It is such 

 an attractive plant that no trouble seems too great if 

 one can induce it to thrive. Other flowers that one 

 never remembers to have seen so fine in the South as in 

 the cooler and moister conditions of Northern gardens 

 are Phlox, Pentstemon, Viola and Sweet Pea. The 

 mention of Phlox reminds one that it is not a difficult 

 matter to increase the stock of this fine late -summer 

 flower by making cuttings of the young growths when 

 they are 4 or 5 inches long. If these are taken off and 

 inserted in pots of sandy soil, kept in a closed and shady 

 frame for a few weeks, they will form roots quickly. 



Concerning Hedges. When a hedge is successful it 

 N 193 



