234 



The American Flower Garden 



which offers three good reasons why every one grows it. Never- 

 theless, for one who rents a country place for only one season, or 

 whose home is not occupied in early spring or late autumn, and a 

 great show of flowers is wanted at midsummer only, when, it 

 must be admitted, comparatively few perennials are at their best; 

 when only a small initial outlay can be spared for a garden, or 

 when there are gaps in the herbaceous border to be filled in with 

 some special colour and timely flowers, annuals will be one's 

 source of garden joy. 



"Cut and come again" might be applicable to many annuals 

 besides the old-fashioned plant that bore the name. If wilted 

 blossoms are kept cut, and seed is not permitted to form, there 

 would seem to be no limit to the bloom these most floriferous of 

 plants can produce. One must grow some of them, if only in 

 the vegetable garden, for cutting alone. The garden and house, 

 too, may be kept gay with them. None, perhaps, displays so 

 decorative a flower as the hollyhock's spire which, however, is use- 

 less for vases; none has the perfectly satisfying outline possessed 

 by the iris, most beloved by the artistic Japanese; none can match 

 the peony for superb size and style, the creeping phlox and the 

 chrysanthemum for earliness and lateness of bloom; but for 

 profusion of flowers and duration of them, for fragrance that 

 very many of them possess, and for lavish display of colour, annual 

 certainly eclipse their long-lived rivals. 



It is their very prodigality, however, that makes them difficult 

 to manage in a garden which they too readily make gaudy. Mod- 

 ern hybridisers have been very busy upon them, multiplying new 

 forms and tints. More flowers than foliage are seen on many of 

 the plants. Especially do they need a background, and very rarely 

 do they get one. Unless used with restraint and thoughtfulness 



