Bulbs, Tuberous Plants and Grasses 271 



Gladioli bloom opportunely when the garden needs lighting 

 up. Their spikes of brightness especially help the perennial border 

 which is wont to look weary at midsummer, before its autumnal 

 revivification begins. Large-flowered new strains are a revela- 

 tion to one who knows only the old sorts. Since they may be had 

 in a great variety of colours, they need never clash with any perma- 

 nent plants. Like cannas, elephants' ears, poker plants, tuberous 

 begonias and dahlias, they must be lifted in autumn and stored 

 in a cellar, but let no one forego growing them on that account. 

 They are worth the little trouble they cost if only for cut flowers 

 which last over a week in water a cheerful fact for the busy 

 housewife. 



Dahlias may be introduced at the back of the perennial border, 

 for they grow tall, require stakes, and do not produce their finest 

 flowers until early autumn, and so ought not to be given a con- 

 spicuous foreground position anywhere on the grounds. But 

 they require deep rich soil, being gross feeders, and will not bear 

 crowding or pilfering from surrounding plants. The single kinds 

 have the most graceful flowers that are splendidly decorative in 

 the garden and that arrange well in vases from which the top- 

 heavy, less lovely double kinds are forever falling out. Wonderful 

 cactus dahlias can be grown by the merest novice who, if he have 

 no other spot, will plant their tubers along the fence of his vegetable 

 garden and deny himself a row of cabbages. He must be warned, 

 however, that not all the superb dahlias seen at the exhibitions, 

 where he learns of the widespread dahlia craze, have garden 

 value because of the weakness of their stems. All the strength of 

 some of them seems to have been forced into the flowers which 

 hide their handsome heads in a mass of leaves. Only the single- 

 flowered kinds grow on tall, slender stems, high above their foliage. 



