THE HARDY GARDEN 81 
there in New England villages root-bound daffo- 
dils, tulips, grape hyacinths and “johnny-go-to- 
beds” are still struggling through the grass to 
show where once was such a garden. 
Mother took a fancy to red cannas, redder gera- 
niums, and reddest salvia, for their gay color, and 
she had a notion that “foliage plants’—meaning 
coleus—and ‘‘elephants’ ears” were as necessary 
to the family position as black walnut furniture 
and body brussels carpets. These plants kept up 
a brave show all summer, the while they gave a 
tropical air to dooryards that was not altogether 
becoming, to say the least. 
Happily the third generation came to its senses. 
Today the tide is turning back and with a force 
such as to leave no doubt that the hardy garden 
is here to stay definitely. Old-fashioned flowers 
of permanence are being restored to places that 
knew them in the long ago and are basic figures 
in the establishment of numberless new ones. 
The hardy garden has come into its own again 
because it is the best of gardens. It is best by 
reason of the very permanence that links it with 
the home, year in and year out, so closely that 
the child born within sound of it will remember 
it with infinite pleasure the rest of his life—even 
though time and circumstance eventually remove 
him far hence. 
There is another reason, and a potent one. It 
is nature’s way. She uses an abundance of an- 
nuals, that there may be no bare spots, and bi- 
