THE OPPORTUNITIES OF THE YEAR 205 



who has a multitude of cultural details pressing 

 upon him at once and in various directions, rather 

 than to that which is in the loving care and 

 thoughts of a leisured and inspired owner. Some- 

 times a long length of shrubbery border skirts a 

 drive where numberless herbaceous plants are used 

 to utmost advantage, giving scope for the most 

 advanced experience and good taste. But it may 

 be a question, after all, whether the old homely 

 plan of having a broad border of flowers on each 

 side of the central path of a kitchen garden is 

 not as enjoyable a way as any. It is a plan open 

 alike to the most prince-like of gardens or to the 

 humble farmhouse, and the very homeliness gives 

 it a charm of its own which may be lacking to 

 more ambitious efforts. Can any sight be more 

 alluring than the vista of the flower-decked path 

 framed in the gateway of a well-appointed kitchen 

 garden ? 



The best plants for the hardy flower borders are 

 known to most people nowadays the taller lark- 

 spurs and hollyhocks and heleniums for back- 

 ground, oriental and other poppies, the beautiful 

 varieties of Chinese paeon ies, eryngiums, the more 

 easily grown lilies, like the Madonna and Nankeen, 

 the tiger and the saffron lilies, alstrcemerias, aqui- 

 legias, campanulas, fraxinella, lupines, and ox- 

 eye daisies of different sorts. It would be easy 

 enough to fill pages with the names of fine her- 

 baceous plants for different purposes. What is 

 not easy is to marshal all these diversities of form 

 and habit and varied hue into such order as will 

 satisfy every sense for while flowers of any kind 



