PREFACE 
The plan of this book is simple. The plants are arranged in the order 
of the months in which they bloom, while for the reader’s convenience 4 
plant which flowers in more months than one is listed afresh in each appro- 
priate month, though the full description of its habit and the directions 
for its culture are given only where it makes its first appearance. 
In the great majority of cases, the dates of bloom are taken from 
personal observations in the vicinity of Boston. The season about New 
York is, generally speaking, about ten days earlier. A rough and ready 
calculation allows six days’ difference to every degree of latitude. 
Yet in this matter of the date of bloom the reader must understand 
that nothing like exactness is possible. All that can be claimed is the 
representation of a fair average. The season of bloom is very irregular, 
often varying as much as a fortnight in the spring. But though early 
dates may vary, by June first all irregularities seem to disappear, and the 
reader can be confident that whatever are the dates of bloom, the succession 
of bloom remains invariable. 
As the plants are divided according to the months in which they first 
bloom, so they are subdivided according to color. In each month’s list of 
blooming plants there are nine color groups, including “ parti-colored,” i.e., 
those plants in which each blossom is variegated, and “ various,” i.e., those 
in which the color of the blossoms vary. 
Since color is the chief glory of a garden, much stress has been laid 
upon it throughout the preparation of the book. Almost every flower 
mentioned has been accurately compared with the appended color chart, 
and in the column devoted to that purpose it bears its appropriate color 
number, while above this in quotation marks is the color ascribed to it by 
some reliable authority. 
The reader must remember, however, that with matters of color it is 
much as with matters of taste. One may call the wood violet purple and 
another insist that it is blue, while red fades so insensibly into pink, and 
yellow blends so imperceptibly into orange, that he is an artist indeed who 
can define tne precise point where one becomes the other. It must also 
be borne in mind that the same flower may vary in color in different 
localities and the same plant may put forth blossoms of varying shades, 
And yet, though you may quarrel with the division lines, they are just in 
the main and are not further wrong than others might well be. 
A word or two is needed concerning the comprehensiveness of this 
vill 
