106 FLOWER GARDENING 
years—as circumstances necessitate, or warrant. 
Whether the hardy scheme be formal or informal, 
a vast amount of experience in the effect of mass- 
ing blossoms and foliage, the combination of colors 
and the meaning of skylines and vistas is to be 
had in this way. 
You want to know, perhaps, how small taper- 
ing evergreens would define certain garden formal- 
ity, or would look in an irregular grouping. Ex- 
periment with the annual that is well named sum- 
mer cypress (Kochia trichophylla). The color is 
light green, changing to a reddish tint in autumn, 
but with the needed form there the imagination 
can do the rest. Or you want to get the effect 
of low shrubs; use the bushy four-o’clock, which 
is a better annual (really a non-hardy perennial) 
than it is credited with being if any of the self- 
colored varieties is used by itself. Put to a prac- 
tical test the color value of sheets of low bloom 
by planting the blood-red Drummond’s phlox or 
the orange eschscholtzia, the value of irregular 
spikes with larkspur, of rayed blossoms with 
Brachycome iberidifolia, of blossoms thrown up 
on long stems with sweet sultan, of scattered bloom 
with cosmos, of clouds of tiny blossoms with 
schizanthus and of pastel shades with scabiosa. 
Work out formal effects with such annuals as the 
China aster, candytuft, stock, godetia, alonsoa, tall 
and dwarf zinnia, chrysanthemum, lupine and 
French and African marigold—any that are not of 
sprawling growth. With a little study it will not be 
