Perennials for a Thought-out Garden 201 



three, perhaps, will be purple or mauve. Peonies that should 

 be "exquisite silvery pink" blush to reveal themselves a vivid 

 magenta. Larkspurs described in the catalogue as of that celes- 

 tial light blue known by the Chinese as "the sky washed by rain/' 

 prove to be double, club-shaped flowers of such deep, dark indigo 

 as only a Chinese laundryman knows the value. Plants not 

 hardy north of Philadelphia are frequently listed without reference 

 to that fact in catalogues sent by the thousand into the New 

 England States and Canada. 



But a polite note dispassionately stating one's grievance to 

 the head of the firm will usually bring forth in him fruits meet 

 for repentance there will be an offer to exchange the plants 

 you did not order for those you did, express charges paid. The 

 time lost cannot be refunded, it is true, but you are mollified 

 until the next blooming season comes around, when it is quite 

 likely that the second attempt to fill your order correctly proves 

 to be no more successful than the first. After three fruitless 

 efforts to get my favourite larkspur from a perfectly honest but 

 careless or colour-blind nurseryman who makes a specialty of 

 hardy flowers, after seeing a twice-planted hedge of altheas, 

 supposed to bear single white flowers, produce double magenta 

 and lilac ones, after suffering eye strain from deep purple, Hoboken 

 pink, indigo, puce and other herbaceous horrors that have to be 

 lug up and consigned to the compost heap to save the garden 

 from a nightmare of ugliness, thereby losing over a third of all 

 the stock purchased and a year of time, I would warn the reader 

 that his only safety lies in visiting the nursery when the plants 

 desired are in bloom and labelling them then and there. Appar- 

 ently there is the grossest carelessness, even among leading 

 nurserymen, about segregating stock to fit the descriptions given 



