84 MAKING OF A FLOWER GARDEN 



Erianthus, often enduring twelve or fifteen successive 

 years of growth in one position. Often it will te 

 found that volunteer plants have come up in favorable 

 spots about the grounds, and these may be lifted and 

 transplanted into other beds or in hedges, for which 

 there is nothing finer. 



Not the least charm of the hardy grasses is the food 

 they afford for the winter birds, who come in flocks 

 on snowy mornings to feed on the seeds of the feath- 

 ery plumes, and it is indeed a pretty sight to see 

 them bend beneath the weight of snowbird, sparrow 

 and junco. 



For a background, or for a tall growth in the center 

 of beds or plantings of lower form the Aralia Cash- 

 meriana is a very ornamental plant with attractive 

 foliage and panicles of small white flowers in early 

 summer. It grows five to eight feet in height and is 

 of easy culture. The boeconia is a stately plant of 

 distinctive, glaucus green foliage and stem, the under 

 side of the leaves being snowy white, and during 

 July and August it is crowned with feathery panicles 

 of creamy-white flowers. It makes a noble clump 

 which always attracts attention and requires little 

 care beyond good soil and to have the rhizome shoots 

 destroyed to prevent its spreading beyond bonds. It 

 is a long-lived plant, dying to the ground in winter 

 and springing up with renewed vigor year after year, 

 often remaining twenty years in possession of the same 



