The garden path in May, with the picking border to the right, where plants are " tried out 



Planting Flowers for Succession Effects— By M. T. R., ° h 



MY "garden path" began in a very 

 small way indeed, as a sort of 

 catch-all for everything not needed or wanted 

 in my little formal garden, into which the 

 path leads, making it one continuous whole. 

 Then I called it the "picking border." 



The path itself is 218 feet long. The 

 flower borders, which are five 

 feet wide, run parallel, and are 

 separated from the path itself 

 by a border of sod one foot wide. 

 They are planted full to over- 

 flowing with perennials and any 

 gaps are filled with annuals. 



One has a great opportunity 

 for effects in a path of this kind, 

 and I have found several ways 

 of obliterating waste places left 

 bare by early blooming peren- 

 nials. As I always grow hun- 

 dreds and hundreds of fox- 

 gloves and Canterbury bells (which latter 

 flower is to me the most lovely thing in the 

 garden), the slump is great when they are 

 over. One of my schemes is to plant calen- 

 dulas among foxgloves, which are cut to the 

 ground when they have bloomed. The calen- 

 dulas bloom beautifully until frost. Those 

 particular ones were the best in the garden, 

 probably because planted far apart. 



In the same way I planted salvia among 

 canterbury bells, which were cut to the 

 ground when over, and the salvias were a 

 great success. Gladiolus bulbs I plant 

 thickly among Canterbury bells, and also 

 among irises. In fact, I use these bulbs 

 everywhere with good effect. In many 



A combination of snapdragons and madonna lilies 



places I pull up the foxgloves and Canter- 

 bury bells entirely, make the beds over and 

 transplant into them coxcomb, annual 

 helianthus, Empress candytuft, or any 

 other easily transplanted annual. I find 

 the seed of annual baby's breath useful for 

 bare spots, and scattered over dead-looking 

 oriental poppies, it covers them nicely and 

 doesn't hurt the poppies. 



I am enthusiastic over annuals, and grow 

 them in profusion in my "picking border." 

 This border is the length and width of the 

 others, and is on the right side of the path 

 border. Here I grow all of the well-known 

 annuals in rows, which makes it easier to 

 care for them (from seed planted May 1st 

 in the open ground). A few 

 are started in the hotbed March 

 1 st — snapdragon, stock, sal- 

 via, phlox, Empress candytuft, 

 and sometimes others. I have 

 found better success with these 

 started early. Empress candy- 

 tuft is a most successful annual — 

 some of mine measured eighteen 

 inches tall, and had heads like 

 hardy phlox. We make several 

 plantings during the summer, and 

 I was picking it all November. 

 Last summer the quaintness of 

 their names induced me to try Joseph's coat, 

 love-lies-bleeding, and Flora's paint brush, 

 and I found only the latter pretty enough to 

 try again. Two most charming annuals have 

 been quite a discovery to me as they are not 

 generally known in this vicinity: Godetia, 

 which looks like a small pink and white 

 poppy is a mass of bloom all summer, and 

 enduring till frost; and the pink agrostemma. 



By June the border is full of color, which is kept up in a constantly changing succession of effects until frost 



165 



