66 THE LITTLE GARDEN 



the charming Salvia farinacea neighbors the soft pink stock. 

 Beauty of Nice; lavender ageratum is lovely, beside earlier Phlox 

 Drummondi Isabellina, or the new Zinnia Isabellina, as well as 

 near the hardy Phlox Braga, or beside such a nice dwarf rambler 

 rose as Ellen Poulsen. Yet where is the ageratum not in place? 

 Also the sweet alyssum, whose clear white spread of flowers and 

 whose delicious fragrance are never finer than after a cool Sep- 

 tember night. The lilac alyssum, too, is a fine novelty, except 

 that it seems not to be worthy of its color-name, except in cooler 

 seasons, or in late autimin, when a lovely tone of palest purple 

 suffuses aJl its flowers. 



May I give now a sjmple planting suggestion for a garden- 

 walk? This is in our upper garden. A walk of gravel, four feet 

 wide, traverses this from end to end, with an eighteen-inch bor- 

 der of turf on either side, between it and the open spaces used 

 for trying out plants. The walk is perhaps fifty feet long, and 

 drops three feet as it enters the main garden on another level. 

 It is only with that on the upper level that we are now concerned. 

 Here for some years the borders were entirely of Beauty of Ox- 

 ford verbena, before roses. But lately a decided change was 

 made. Two years ago, as the only trees or shrubs now along the 

 walks are four dwarf standard apple trees (the Delicious) at the 

 intersection of the cross-walks in the upper garden — two years 

 ago we set out eight French lilacs on either side of the walk from 

 the tea-house to the steps to the lower garden. To each yoimg 

 lilac we moved a fine peony from other borders. Aroimd these 

 peonies in spring, and blooming with the lilacs, are trial groups of 

 May-flowering tulips, and now, and since July, two rows of love- 

 liest annuals, flame-pink zinnias from Vaughn's seed, and agera- 

 tum. Cope's Pet, from Dreer — the latter placed nearest the turf- 

 border. The little apple trees cast rounding shadows across 

 smooth gravel, grass, and flowers. The flowers themselves give 



