234 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



May, 1911 



blend with native trees and shrubs. There- 

 fore: 



4. Try nine times to find a hardy plant 

 that will do the work, before using a tender 

 one, even in the garden. — This is easy if 

 you will refer to the planting lists given 

 in The Garden Magazine for May, 1909, 

 pages 218 to 220. 



RULES FOR COLOR HARMONY 



Simple color schemes are better than 

 complicated ones. Complicated schemes 

 may be successful in a long, hardy border, 

 but they will not do in a garden. The 

 simplest scheme I know, and the best for 

 the greatest number, is: 



5. Keep magenta entirely out of your 

 garden. — Magenta and the colors near it 

 cause nine-tenths of all color discord. 

 Never buy flowers advertised as crimson, 

 crimson-pink, mauve, purple, or maroon 

 until you have seen them. 



6. Wherever you use strong colors, use 

 " peacemakers" as fillers or ground covers. — 

 The only peacemakers are green and white. 

 Green foliage is not enough. Use 30 to 

 50 per cent, white flowers, for they are 

 the only ones that will harmonize with 

 every other color. 



Therefore, edge all beds of strong colors 

 with white flowers, or else carpet the 

 ground with gray-leaved plants, e. g., 

 lavender cotton, woolly thyme, Cerastium 

 tomentosum, etc. 



7. Use green foliage in preference to highly 

 colored. — Avoid abnormal and variegated 

 leaves. Never use coleus, acalypha, achy- 

 ranthes, perilla, or crotons, if you can 

 avoid them. 



8. Use single-hued flowers — rarely flow- 

 ers of many hues. — Use self-colored pansies, 

 verbenas, phlox, in preference to the 

 variegated. Single colors are purer, strong- 

 er, quieter, richer than those that are 

 mixed or variegated. They centre the 

 interest; variegated plants distract. One 

 class is restful, the other restless. Avoid 

 nemesias, lantanas, Joseph's coat, etc. 

 Use heliotropes, lobelias, scarlet sage, 

 tufted pansies of yellow or violet, Salvia 

 patens, white geranium. 



9. Have only one flower in a bed at one 

 time, or two at most; not more. — The 

 wrong kind of boarding-house has too 

 much variety at any one meal and not 

 enough from week to week. The right 

 kind has relatively little variety at any 



one meal, but plenty during the week. So 

 with your flower beds and garden. 



RULE EOR ECONOMY 



The wrong way to economize is to go 

 without a garden and run up doctor's 

 bills; to do without a designer, and have 

 to rearrange the whole place; to beat 

 down the nurseryman or buy of irrespon- 

 sible concerns that do not maintain a 

 national reputation by advertising. There- 

 fore: 



10. Have the best of everything that is 

 permanent, even though the first cost be 

 greater, for it is cheaper in the end. — Simple 

 beds and hardy flowers are cheaper to 

 maintain than fancy beds of tender plants, 

 and the biggest item in gardening is labor. 

 The ideal material to plant around your 

 house is a bed of rhododendrons and 

 mountain laurel — not a flower bed. For 

 bedding, evergreens are preferable to 

 shrubs, shrubs are preferable to peren- 

 nials, perennials to annuals, and annuals 

 to tender plants. 



WHY "SHAW'S GARDEN" IS AHEAD 



The highest ideals in flower bedding, so 

 far as I know, are represented by the 

 Missouri Botanical Garden, an institution 

 in St. Louis, affectionately known to hun- 

 dreds of thousands of people as "Shaw's 

 Garden." I will not say it is the best 

 garden, for the buildings shown in these 

 pictures seem to me (and I know Doctor 

 Trelease will pardon me for saying so) in 

 doubtful taste. It may be right that the 

 Botanical Garden should preserve those 

 buildings, because they accurately present 

 the taste of another period. 



Pre-Raphaelite pictures are very bad art, 

 but the galleries must have them, because 

 they show the history of art. Everything 

 that was characteristic of the Victorian age 

 is abhorrent to the rising generation. But 

 intolerance is bad. Let us destroy most 

 of the bad old art that is perishable, but 

 let us save the most important and perma- 

 nent examples that are instructive to the 

 human race. 



The bad old kind of bedding is present, 

 as well as the good, new kind. And I 

 think Doctor Trelease does right to keep 

 some of those old things that seem to him 

 and to me almost excruciating. For in 

 no other way can he be faithful to his trust. 

 There is no question that Mr. Shaw liked 



that sort of thing and those buildings. One 

 proof is that this sunken garden is part 

 of his old home. Another is that he made 

 provision for the perpetuation of carpet 

 bedding on a big scale. He wanted it for 

 the people. They liked it then as they 

 do now, and they always will. The more 

 cultivated people become the more they 

 rejoice in form, the more ignorant they 

 are the more exclusively they are devoted 

 to color. 



Why, then, is Shaw's Garden fifty years 

 ahead of the times? Because, as far as 

 possible, it stands for simplicity, self- 

 restraint, and color harmony. Whether it 

 recognizes any such rules as I have given 

 above, I don't know, but I drew up those 

 rules from a study of that garden. I will 

 not hold Doctor Trelease or his colleagues 

 responsible for anything I say, or anything 

 you find beneath the pictures, but the 

 great practical lessons we all have to learn 

 from Shaw's Garden, it seems to me, are 

 three. 



First, let us try to discover the laws of 

 good taste and beauty and eagerly obey 

 them, instead of trying to over-ride them 

 or following instinct, heart's desire, or 

 authority. And let us discuss these things 

 openly and without heat or personal- 

 ities, for progress is impossible without 

 criticism. 



Second, the "fun" of the bedding game is 

 originality. The wrong way to exercise 

 it is in making elaborate designs and big 

 shows. The right way is to find new 

 forms and colors in plants. 



Third, the only sure way to success is 

 to have a trial garden. You must test 

 a new variety a year before you know 

 whether you can trust it amid formal 

 surroundings. Every plant has serious 

 limitations and it takes a year to find them 

 out. Your trial garden is in an out of the 

 way place, enclosed by a high board fence, 

 where a plant that gets shabby after bloom- 

 ing does not destroy a beautiful picture. 

 There you may grow plants cheaply, be- 

 cause they are in straight rows. And 

 there you may find and propagate an 

 occasional good thing, unknown to parks 

 and florists, which is new in color, form, or 

 pictorial quality. 



Let us have no more blind following of 

 authority in matters of taste, but let us have 

 a good, rousing discussion — preferably with 

 pictures I 



II. — Some Different Styles of Bedding— By wniiam Trelease, 



Director of the Missouri 

 Botanical Garden 



THE conditions under which plants are 

 grown in a botanical garden are en- 

 tirely different from those that prevail in 

 any other kind of establishment, though 

 they are nearer those of a commercial 

 seed-raising house than anything else. 

 The real or fancied need of keeping any- 

 where from 5,000 to 25,000 distinct kinds 

 of plants under cultivation is, perhaps, the 

 pivotal point. 



The typical old-time university garden 



has long since solved the riddle economically 

 and with a measure of success by the adop- 

 tion of small beds for the different kinds of 

 plants, with paths intersecting at right 

 angles or otherwise between them, as in 

 Fig. 9. The need of connecting label 

 data with each of the many species and 

 varieties, and of preventing these from in- • 

 termingling, practically dictates a distinct 

 bed or, as the seedsman does it, a row for 

 each kind. Even then, it is rare to find 



a gardener who knows anything like even 

 a thousand species well enough to be sure 

 of their names, though he may recognize 

 the appearance in a familiar place of some- 

 thing different from what he has been 

 accustomed to see there, and he may have 

 a tenacious memory for some alias under 

 which a plant has been introduced. 



The large botanical gardens provide 

 for a great part of their collections in this 

 same way; but usually they also have a 



