Some Perennial Bellflowers That I Have Tried 



E. HERRICK 



The Colors Range Through Shades of Blue to 

 White and the Plants Endure from Year to Year 



THE Canterbury-bell, that charming 

 old-fashioned biennial that has its wor- 

 shippers wherever gardens grow, is 

 curiously enough almost alone of its 

 great family in popular esteem. For the Bell- 

 flowers of almost innumerable species and 

 varieties of equal — aye, sometimes even greater — 



beauty, are practically unknown outside of the 

 larger gardens of America. 



Fortunately for my own acquaintance with 

 the Campanula, my garden is so shaded for the 

 major portion of thesummer,thatonly those plants 

 which can survive with a modicum of sunlight 

 locate there happily. The introduction of the 



Most Familiar of Indoor Bellflowers 



This stately Chimney-flower (Campanula pyramidalis) the blue or white towering monarch of its tribe, will hold its blossoms 



satisfactorily only if the bees leave them unfertilized, and thus it prefers the shelter of a greenhouse 



Bellflowers proved one of my happiest garden 

 friend-makings. So now each spring when the 

 flower-directories — miscalled catalogues — come 

 out, I turn first to the "C's" in the hope of dis- 

 covering among the strangers a newcomer (to me) 

 of the Campanula family. 



Sometimes the stranger has, as it were, taken 

 out naturalization papers, and one can obtain it 

 "root and branch" with good New York, Massa- 

 chusetts, or Pennsylvania nursery soil reas- 

 suringly attached, but oftener I have to start 

 with the baby folk and raise them laboriously, 

 if lovingly, from foreign seed; and though it 

 takes longer for results, I like it better. For I 

 find the small nurslings make healthier, sturdier 

 "grown-ups" than the mature plants, even when 

 the latter are purchasable. 



After Canterbury-bell (Campanula Medium) 

 probably the best known of the Bellflower lineage 

 are the Chimney-flower (Campanula pyramidalis) 

 the Peach-leaf Bellflower (C. persicifolia) and 

 the dainty Scotch Bluebell (C. rotundifolia). 

 The Platycodon, also sometimes catalogued as 

 Wahlenbergia is, in reality a magnified Campan- 

 ula. A plant of great beauty and floriferousness, 

 this, the Balloon-flower or Japanese Bellflower, is 

 especially valuable for alternating in double rows 

 with Scarlet Salvia for hedge effect. First the blue 

 mass of the Balloon-flower, then the cool green 

 cover of Salvia foliage and the vivid scarlet bloom, 

 as the former literally subsides under both. 



Of especial interest during these war-years 

 from the world-prominence of its native moun- 

 tains, is Carpathian Harebell (C. carpatica), a 

 pretty dwarf of spreading habit, its flowers very 

 like miniature Platycodons. It needs, however, 

 rather more sun than most of its family, being 

 inclined to straggle in too dense shade. Cam- 

 panula macrantha, on the contrary, can be grown 

 and flowered anywhere, which is its chief recom- 

 mendation, as its foliage is rough and its habit 

 weedy. In a New England farm garden, aban- 

 doned apparently for many years, I found several 

 plants of this Bellflower blossoming bravely in 

 the tangle of weeds and grass. While the flowers 

 are small, they are daintily shaped and have a 

 pretty shade of lilac-blue. 



The delicate porcelain blue of the milk-flowered 

 Bellflower (Campanula lactiflora) and its grace- 

 ful, symmetrical form should commend it to 

 favor here. In English gardens it is a great 

 favorite. Another of the older ones not yet so 

 popular among us as it deserves is the Clus- 

 tered Bellflower (C. glomerata) flowering in 

 July and August. It has dense clusters of flowers 

 of an effective violet-blue and in habit of growth 

 is semi-dwarf. 



' I *HE year the war broke out I received 



*■ through a German house seeds of several 

 species of Campanula to which I was a stranger. 

 As I have found but one of these listed in any 

 American catalogue that I have seen, a brief 

 description of each, with notes of my experience 

 in growing it, will perhaps be of especial interest 

 to those gardeners who, like myself, are neces- 

 sarily interested in plants that thrive in partial 

 shade. 



Surprising Double Flowers in Blue and White 



I70R many years the type of the Peach- 

 " leaved Bellflower (C. persicifolia) had been 

 familiar, but its large-flowered double variations 

 in white and blue were revelations. The double 

 white form — C. persicifolia gigantea plena Moer- 

 heimi, to give it its full imposing title — is an ex- 

 tremely beautiful and desirable perennial that 



