212 



The American Flower Garden 



look well with hardy bamboos and poker plants, but out of place 

 next low-growing, broad-leaved day lilies. 



Try to have no more than two or, at the most, three, har- 

 monious colours flowering in the perennial border at one time. 

 Many shades of the same colour may be introduced for variety. 

 Harmony is always more desirable than sharp contrasts. It 

 saves trouble and clashing to group together in the same section 

 of the bed plants whose flowers are of approximately the same 

 colour, and so chosen as to follow each other in an overlapping 

 succession throughout the season. For instance, a yellow and 

 white section might begin its display with snowdrops, crocuses, 

 tulips, daffodils and narcissus, arabis, yellow alyssum and white 

 creeping phlox in the low foreground; continue with the gray- 

 white Florentine and yellow irises, columbines, candytuft, peonies, 

 yellow brier and white rugosa roses, foxgloves, garden heliotrope, 

 hollyhocks, coreopsis, day primroses, the pearl, white, lemon 

 and orange day-lilies, Shasta daisies, phlox, meadow rue, and so 

 on through the rudbeckias, sunflowers, boltonia and golden glow 

 of late summer to the chrysanthemums and Japanese anemones 

 of autumn. The yellow might be intensified to orange and flame 

 with Oriental poppies, lychnis, butterfly weed and poker plant if 

 one desires to pass by gradual transition to a scarlet, red and 

 crimson section. Or, all the stronger tones may be omitted, and 

 paler yellows only retained with the cold whites that lead by easy 

 transition to blue, lilac and purple flowers if there are no pink 

 or red ones blooming in any part of the border at the same time. 



From the early pink creeping phlox and tulips of April to the 

 tree and herbaceous peonies of May, the damask roses, pink poppies 

 and pyrethrums of June, the mallows, hollyhocks, and phloxes 

 of July, and so on to the late pink chrysanthemums, is a lovely 



