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FAMILIAR GARDEN FLOWERS. 
remarkable for perfection of form and exquisite colouring. 
In self-coloured purple, crimson, and salmon-tinted, and 
in oculate flowers that have white grounds and centres 
delicately stained with rose, carmine, and ruby, this class 
of plants is extremely rich. Of pure whites there are not 
many of good quality, and we have as yet no scarlet, no 
yellow, and no blue phloxes. We may, however, hope 
fur scarlet and blue, because in some of the later varieties 
these colours are nearly realised, but we can hardly hope 
for yellow, since nowhere in the genus is there any strong 
leaning that way. As the case stands we have command 
of a sumptuous series of summer and autumn flowers, and 
it is but the simple truth to say that the florists’ phloxes 
have pre-eminent claims on the attention of amateurs, 
because of their splendour, their hardiness, cheapness, and 
extreme usefulness, whether to exhibit, to cut from for 
decorations, or to enrich the garden with their noble 
panicles of many-coloured flowers. 
As to the employment of phloxes in the garden, there 
is no method so effective as to dot them about amongst 
trees and shrubs, keeping them, of course, in the fore- 
ground, and ensuring them a sufficiency of air and light. 
As border flowers they are invaluable ; but the least in- 
teresting way of growing them is in large compartments 
of phloxes only, as we see them in nurseries, and in the 
gardens of amateurs who give them particular attention 
for the purpose of exhibiting them. When well grouped 
on the exhibition table they are altogether delightful, but 
a great lot of phloxes in a lump, as it were, in the garden 
is like a mouthful of honey-——too rich to be enjoyable, and 
likely to choke one. 
The cultivation of the phlox is a very simple affair, 
