My Ambition Grows 27 
but it is far more satisfactory. For example my yellow bed is 
not distinctly yellow until August when the Rudbeckias, 
Heleniums, Helianthus letifolius and Helianthus mollis and 
golden glow are all in bloom. During the earlier part of the 
season I can count on these plants being green, and I plant in 
that bed any color that I intended to emphasize over the gen- 
eral garden up to August. In early spring that bed shows blue 
hyacinths, later the rose pink Lychnis dioica rosea; later still 
the blue Campanula rapunculoides. During the interval be- 
tween the last named, the creamy yellow day lily (Hemer- 
occalis flava) shines forth like stars against the north bound- 
ary wall beyond. In this way certain beds may be committed 
to definite colors, yet lend themselves to a larger color tone 
that may pervade the whole garden for a brief season. I mean 
to work along this line still further; but it must be remem- 
bered, that, to get a strong general effect, one should have 
from a dozen to thirty plants of showy bloom of any given 
variety. Instead of giving a single large space to columbines 
I distribute them according to color in every bed, and during 
their reign, the garden seems to be largely columbines. In 
the same way, I have used the Michaelmas daisy, hollyhock, 
campanulas, forget-me-not, perennial phlox, flava lily, pol- 
emonium, foxglove, Chrysanthemum maximum, perennial 
pea, infant’s breath, lupines, iris, lychnis, sweet-william; also 
meadow rue, garden heliotrope, and clematis, which break 
into a white foam, the high-water mark of the whole summer, 
and then gently ebb into green obscurity. By choosing your 
dates with exactness, you may plant what you will in any bed, 
and still maintain pure color; but, to do it, you must know your 
plants intimately. For several years I have kept a careful 
record of the date of bloom of each plant. If conditions are 
normal, they appear each year promptly to a day; but some- 
times the season is late, or a cold prolonged rain defers them 
