12 A PLEA FOR HARDY PLANTS 



to the garden, and the time soon comes when the annual outlay can 

 be devoted entirely to care and culture. 



I know a gentleman who carried a fine stalk of Lilium auratum 

 flowers into the office of one of the largest business houses in our city. 

 Not a man in the office knew what it was, and all were unwilling to 

 believe that it grew in his garden. They supposed it to be some rare 

 and costly flower grown in a conservatory. Yet these lilies, and 

 dozens of other things as fine, can now be bought as cheaply as bedding 

 plants. 



The people do not prefer bedding plants to hardy ones. They 

 have no choice in the matter. They buy what the local florist oflfers 

 and what they see in their neighbors' gardens. They are not sufficiently 

 interested to make inquiries. They do not read the gardening papers ; 

 and, with few exceptions, the managers of the city parks, who should be 

 educators of the people in gardening, are content with what might be 

 called an annual pyrotechnical display of bedding plants, as it is of such 

 short duration and little artistic value. 



The popularity of bedding plants is happily on the wane. It occurs 

 to almost everybody after a time that they do not get much for their 

 money when they buy this sort of material; but I cannot say that hardy 

 plants are gaining much. There is no considerable effort made to 

 attract the public attention to their merits; and when some man, more 

 enterprising than his neighbors, does take the trouble to hunt them up 

 and do his gardening with them the result is not always happy. He 

 is very apt to use them as he would bedding plants — that is, in formal 

 beds cut out of the grass of the lawn. Of course, hardy plants do not 

 lend themselves to this treatment, and it is one of their greatest merits 

 that they do not. Better no flowers at all than that the lawn should 

 be cut up in formal beds for their accommodation. 



An objection often urged against hardy plants is their short dura- 

 tion of bloom, but this really is one of their greatest merits. Let us 

 consider the garden that depends exclusively upon bedding plants for its 

 decoration. It is usually the first of June before they can be planted, 

 and it is well into July before they are efifective ; often by the end 

 of September they are killed by frost, and every day during their short 

 season of three months they are as unchanging in appearance as the 

 carpets in our houses, and about as interesting. 



On the contrary, the well-planned and well-planted garden of hardy 



