April, 1919 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



119 



ALTHOUGH the extreme contrast of exuberant 

 •**■ Sedum life is ever before me, I sometimes 

 fancy that, as Queen Eleanor's crosses were 

 commemorative stations of her resting places, 

 on that last sad journey down from Lincolnshire 

 to London, so are Sedum acres colonies commem- 

 orative stations of the progress from one end of 

 the garden to the other, of this little plant that 

 strikes the note of life so persistently. 



Strangely enough this symbol of life appears 

 to have a predilection for cemeteries, seeming 

 there as elsewhere, however, ever-young and 

 ever-lasting. 



I often wish, indeed, that S. acre were an 

 annual, with the enforced restraint of annual 

 growth. 



Especially in midsummer when it is natural 

 for it to lose its browned stems and flowers, is 

 its perennial nature discouraging. For then the 



A peep into a closely settled Sedum community where the various species flourish 

 in a harmonious tangle 



gardener running her fingers through the spent 

 growth, pulls out relentlessly — feeling like a 

 termagant the while — the Sedum's faded locks, 

 and stirs up an acrid odor, in so doing, that 

 affects the throat unpleasantly for a time, re- 

 minding her very strongly that its common name 

 is Wall-pepper. But after all said and done, S. 

 acre is a lovable little thing — a favorite with a sur- 

 prising number of amateur gardeners in our village. 

 The neighborhood children, too, are delighted to 

 plant it in their gardens, where it is called by a 

 new name of their invention — The Star-flower. 



It was on the last day of February that I 

 made the first tour around my garden, after our 

 extraordinarily severe winter of a year ago, and 

 the most hope-inspiring sight I saw, was patches 

 of S. acre, here and there, still partly covered with 

 ice to be sure, but already far and away ahead of 

 the grass in this early greening. I also resign- 

 edly noted the beginnings of numerous S. 

 acre colonies that had wintered, very well indeed, 

 on the drive! 



No such prankish ways as little Sedum acre's 

 belong to its taller, upright-growing relatives. 

 S. spectabile holds erect its height of eighteen 

 inches, and dignifies the border by its presence — 

 the large umbels of pink or crimson bloom most 

 welcome as the garden season wanes. Used as 

 a cut-flower for the house, its flat-topped heads 

 and sturdy stalks and leaves proved rather un- 

 expectedly attractive, in an odd sort of way, 

 both as to form and color and its lasting quality 

 in water was (Sedum-like) remarkable. 



Of similar habit is the Ghost, so called because, 

 when it came from a far Western garden to my 

 own, it was as white as a piece of ivory, root and 

 all, except for a hint of green in the leaves. How- 

 ever, with more complete development, the spec- 

 tral aspect vanished and it can now respond quite 

 properly, I think, to the more definite name of 

 S. japonicum macrophyllum. 



TF A tramp may be called an escape from 

 A civilization, then S. telephium, the common 

 Liveforever, is the tramp of the Sedum family — 



since it is now an escape from the garden to the 

 wild. But it is a beloved vagabond whom, for 

 old times' sake, one would gladly reinstate within 

 garden bounds, if only space permitted. For 

 its leaves furnish material for the green bags 

 such as little Polly makes in one of Mrs. Mary 

 Mapes Dodge's "Rhymes and Jingles." 



"Little Polly, always clever-*- 

 Takes a leaf of Liveforever 

 Before you know it, 

 You see her blow it, 

 A gossamer sack 

 With a velvet back." 



Grown-up, even elderly, Pollys also do this 

 deed, unto this day, if the truth were told. Not 

 long ago a group of cousins on ancestral quest 

 intent, met in an old graveyard where Liveforever 

 abounds. Each made, right then and there, 

 "a gossamer-sack with a velvet back," doing 

 the childish act just as, quite 

 possibly, it was done in their 

 own day and generation by those 

 over whom the Liveforever has 

 long been growing. 



I wish it were as easy to offer 

 hospitality to a Sedum ransacked 

 from memories of my childhood's 

 garden when a belated Sedum 

 consciousness at last dawned upon 

 me, as it would be to find the 

 Sedum tramp and ask him in. My 

 lost Sedum, rather common in our 

 gardens many years ago, was. 

 known to us as Crowfoot, and the 

 term well expressed the form of 

 its Sedum-pink infloresence. The 

 foliage was feathery along a stem 

 five or six inches high if I remem- 

 ber aright, all very soft and pretty, 

 but someway it was not regarded 

 as highly as it would be now, when 

 I find myself watching for its reappearance in 

 some one of the Sedums new to me, having 

 Crowfoot characteristics, as they are chosen for 

 my nowadays garden. 



One thing new for this year is to be the 

 annual form of Sedum caeruleum, sown as 

 in experiment, among Crocuses newly set last 

 fall. This delicate, low-growing plant having 

 all the Sedum characteristics except longevity, 

 lived its one summer in a friend's garden, from 

 whence a sprig came to me, to live on and on, 

 for a few weeks, in a vase of water. Its tiny 

 flowers changed from blue to pinkish purple 

 before it finally gave up trying to prove itself 

 an "Everlasting Livelong," but it held its charm 

 to the last. That peculiar charm so many feel, 

 compellingly, with Sedums in 

 general. 



~^"OT for all however, quite 

 -'-^ naturally, does this charm 

 exist. The extent of the differ- 

 ence of appeal is notable when 

 Mr. Eden Philpotts, in his de- 

 lightful "My Garden" book 

 frankly states. "Other succu- 

 lents interest me far more than 

 . . . Sedums, Sempervivums, 

 Cotyledons, Echeverias." 



Happily on further reading, a 

 few Sedum notes appear which 

 seem to modify, in some measure, 

 the severity of that anti-Sedum 

 declaration — notes, between the 

 lines of which one reads a pretty 

 fair degree of interest in those 

 particular members of the Sedum 

 tribe alluded to as follows: "My 

 favorites, if I have any, are S. 

 pulchellum,an old and rare beauty 

 with pink flowers and lovely foli- 

 age; kamtschaticum; Midden- 

 dorf's and Stahlii. The last has 

 yellow flowers, and I doubt its 

 hardiness, but each leaf will make 



a plant. . . . The huge Sedum spectabile is 

 brown with honey bees in late autumn." 



In two instances, these welcome notes are 



Our Rock of Gibraltar with the Spanish Sedum hispanicum 

 standing guard 



serving me as letters of introduction to hitherto 

 unheard-of Sedums. One, "Middendorf's," 

 discovered this spring in an American plants- 

 man's catalogue, will come to my garden as 

 soon as weather permits. For the other the 

 engaging pulchellum, I am bn the watch, 

 with considerable hope, as it is native to our 

 Southern states, of finding it before long in 

 the lists — those enticing lists, where, doubtless 

 many other good things will appear, from time 

 to time, to add to the apparently limitless, 

 yet ever-fresh interest of my little collection 

 of Sedums. 



"Hills of Snow" as a Winter Bouquet 



O 



F MY many shrubs, about the most satis- 

 factory is the " Hills of Snow" variety of 

 Hydrangea. I have it planted on the east 

 side of the house just in frontof a hedge of 

 climbing Roses (Crimson Rambler, Dorothy Per- 

 kins, and Excelsa) which screens the back yard from 

 the street. They are all in bloom at the same time 

 and the effect is very pleasing. A combination 

 bouquet of the Rose clusters, Hydrangea, and the 

 airy Gypsophila paniculata (commonly known 

 as Angel's-breath or Baby's-breath) is beautiful. 

 When the Hydrangea blossoms first open they 

 are of a pale green cast, changing to white when 

 in full bloom, then again reverting to the first 

 shade — light green, and as they dry turn a light 

 brown. In late October a friend called my at- 

 tention to its possibilities as an "everlasting" 

 winter bouquet, an idea that was new to me 

 and may be to others. — Mary Rutner, Mich. 



Massed and allowed to grow naturally the Sedums make effective landscape pictures. 

 A showy Sedum (S. spectabile) 



