in the Flower Garden. 107 



scarlet with white, yellow or blue ; orange with purple ; yel- 

 low with lilac or violet. The principal thing to be avoided 

 is placing yellow next orange ; blue next violet : rose-colored 

 next scarlet, or orange and violet next rose-colored. Any 

 two colors which do not contrast well naturally, may be 

 brought together by the intervention of white, which will 

 relieve any color, but should not be placed next yellow. 



It is the desire of every one, as far as possible, to keep a 

 successional variety and maintain a continual beauty and 

 gayety through the summer season, in the flower garden ; and 

 to eifect this, requires great skill and experience to know the 

 time of sowing and raising the plants which are to occupy 

 the beds. Towards the middle or latter end of May is gene- 

 rally the season for stocking the flower garden with those 

 plants which have been preparing during winter and spring, 

 and which are raised either from cuttings or seeds, and 

 brought forward by artificial heat. Such plants as helio- 

 tropes, salvias, verbenas, anagallis, calceolarias, petunias, &c., 

 will generally continue to bloom all summer. 



The half hardy annuals, and biennials, which have been 

 brought forward in hotbeds, and which take their place in 

 the general arrangement at the same time, such as stocks, 

 China asters, phloxes, lobelias, balsams, cockscombs, ama- 

 ranths, portulacuas, will also keep up a continuance of 

 bloom during the greater part of the summer ; but it is advis- 

 able to sow the same in seed beds, in the open ground, for a 

 succession, by the end of April or beginning of May, the time 

 when the various kinds of hardy annuals are sown for a 

 general crop out of doors. All the Californian annuals, viz., 

 Clarkias, Collinsias, nemophilas, leptosiphons, godetias and 

 Zrupinus nanus, &xj., are very beautiful, and flower in great 

 profusion ; they are well adapted to plant the beds which 

 have been occupied with hyacinths, ranunculuses, tulips, <fec., 

 after they have done flowering. To get a good succession of 

 flowers from these beautiful annuals, seeds should be sown at 

 intervals of three weeks, twice or thrice after the first sowing. 

 Should you think the above hints worth a place in ^'■our 

 Magazine, they are at your service for that purpose. 



Newton, Mass., March, 1845. 



