7 6 The American Flower Garden 



fragrance through the kitchen door. Herrick was not the last 

 Anglo-Saxon to approve of "erring sweetness" or to take "delight 

 in disorder," which, he frankly admits, 



"Do more bewitch me than when Art 

 Is too precise in every part." 



We Americans are an intensely practical people, and when 

 we come to count the cost of our gardens, we happily find that the 

 naturalistic treatment is the least expensive because it is permanent. 

 Potted plants from the florist and millions of geraniums and 

 foliage plants are sold annually give a quick, pyrotechnic 

 display of flowers, it is true, but frost finishes them forever; 

 whereas the price of these tender darlings of the gardener, if in- 

 vested in a few good shrubs or hardy perennials, would yield far 

 more real beauty and strike their roots into our home affections. 



f Bedding plants mean money thrown away after a single season. 

 Some gardeners change all the tender plants in a bed, not once, but 

 several times in a summer to keep up a brilliant succession of bloom 

 a senseless extravagance when a more artistic pageant might be 

 arranged with hardy flowers. Not the least claim for the free, 

 picturesque, naturalistic method of planting, is the comparatively 



/ small cost of taking care of a place where floral features do not have 

 to be annually renewed. 



Hardy trees, shrubs, vines, plants and bulbs rapidly compound 

 their beauty and value year after year. Ten dollars wisely spent 

 upon a hardy garden will produce more beautiful effects, more 

 variety, interest, pleasure and artistic satisfaction than a hundred 

 dollars invested in bedding plants could ever do. 



The garden that is planted permanently soon overflows its 

 beauty into an entire neighbourhood. As its loveliness increases, 

 so do the owner's friends, who fall heirs to the offshoots and 



