Perennials for a Thought-out Garden 197 



and one who has taken the pains to count the surprising number 

 of plants in even a modest little garden might well be appalled 

 at the price of a new one composed entirely of nursery stock. 

 But when it is remembered that the first cost of a perennial is its 

 only cost, that a large stock can be speedily worked up from 

 small beginnings, that the gaps in the new beds or borders may 

 be filled in with annuals for a few years until the hardy plants 

 have sufficiently increased to overspread the bare places, that 

 many perennials grow from seed as readily as annuals, and that 

 patience, rather than money, is required to establish home-grown 

 vigorous stock, the argument for economy must be decided finally 

 in favor of permanent plants. Otherwise, how could every 

 cottager in Europe contrive to have his little dooryard bright 

 with them ? They are secured at practically no cost, the casta- 

 ways from large estates supplying the workmen on them with 

 gleanings from which their neighbours profit in time. When the 

 old-fashioned garden gave place to geometric patterns of tender 

 bedding plants on the fair lawns of England in the Victorian era 

 of ugliness, many choice perennials would have perished from 

 the land had they not been treasured by the humble, who were 

 able to propagate plants from their old stock and restore them 

 to the gentry of the parish when the hardy garden happily came 

 into vogue again later in the nineteenth century. 



Winter is the best time to make a garden which, in any case, 

 should be prepared on paper, to be pored over and dreamed about 

 months before a spade is struck into the earth. What visions 

 of beauty flash upon the inner eye! What bliss of solitude comes 

 to the garden lover planning his plots before a wood fire after 

 the winter crop of catalogues has been gathered into his library! 

 His imagination compasses all joys, but no difficulties. There will 



