September, 1909 



THE G A RDEN M A GAZINE 



67 





- 









it ■ 





. v'"' . *" 



Solomon's seal is a great favorite in English gardens. 

 It is thought to suggest the flight of birds 



six to ten feet high make a stirring spectacle. 

 Many mulleins have noble rosettes of huge 

 silvery leaves. And breeders have improved 

 the old purple mullein (!'. phceniceum) 

 until it now has a fairly good pink in addition 

 to violet, lilac, rose, white, and copper color. 



How little imagination we exercise toward 

 plants whose chief fault is that they are 

 easy to grow! For example, many Americans 

 have discarded Polygonum Sachalinense 

 because it multiplies too fast. An English 

 gardener told me that, if you will pull the 

 suckers, hardly any will be formed after the 

 third year. And if you confine the plant to 

 three stems and feed heavily it will make 

 an extra tall and thick bush, and arch so 

 gracefully that you may use it as a specimen 

 plant on the lawn. I believe we could make 

 some extraordinary pictures by applying 

 this principle to the perennial sunflowers 

 and the plume poppies or bocconias. Other 

 tall plants of rough or coarse habit that make 

 very striking pictures in English wild gardens 

 are the giant silver thistles (Onopordon and 

 the like), the compass plants or silphiums and 

 the metallic blue globe thistles and sea hollies. 



I often saw great clumps of moon daisy 

 (Chrysanthemum uliginosum) reflected in 

 the water. This plant never attains mag- 

 nificent proportions in a border unless it is 

 given an extra supply of water. A big 

 colony by the waterside holding up thousands 

 of great white daisies at a height of six feet 

 is a vision of beauty. 



The greatest of all waterside effects in 

 England is the titanic foliage of Gunnera, 

 the leaves attaining a maximum breadth of 

 eleven feet. This is not hardy with us. 

 The biggest leaf we can have is that of 

 Rheum Collinianum. 



Of all the tall perennials I saw by the 

 waterside in England, the most refined, it 

 seemed to me, was Polygonum Sieboldii or 

 cuspidatum. 



PICTURES CONTAINING LIFE 



The brooding peace of secluded English 

 gardens is made sweeter by the presence of 



white doves. The magnificence of others 

 is enhanced by the presence of peacocks. 

 We ought to attract song birds to the garden 

 by providing a drinking and bathing place 

 for them. I cannot even hint at other ways 

 of bringing life into the garden because my 

 subject is perennial flowers. But we can 

 use some of these to lure interesting creatures. 

 In the "American Flower Garden" Neltje 

 Blanchan gives a list of red flowers with 

 long tubes that will attract the humming 

 bird. It includes bee balm, wild red colum- 

 bine, cardinal flower, and Coquelicot phlox. 



Very much like humming birds are the 

 hawk moths, which fly at dusk and are 

 sometimes called humming bird moths. 

 These you can attract by having plenty of 

 fragrant white flowers with long tubes. I 

 have seen a dozen of these gorgeous creatures 

 hovering over masses of the phlox called 

 Miss Lingard. Nicotianas and honey- 

 suckles will draw the largest and showiest 

 moths, such as the Luna, Cecropia, Cynthia, 

 and Imperial. 



However, moths are night fliers and there- 

 fore not so important as the butterflies, 

 which animate a garden by day. Among 

 the largest and most gorgeous of these are 

 the swallowtails which visit a great variety 

 of flowers. Violets attract the butterflies 

 know as fritillaries. Snapdragons attract 

 the nymph which the entomologists call 

 the "buckeye." The enthusiast who desires 

 further suggestions along this line may 

 glean them from Comstock's "How to 

 Know the Butterflies." There is one 

 plant worth having in every garden 

 because it is habitually covered with 

 more butterflies at a time than any other 

 I know. This is the blazing star or the 

 Kansas gay feather (Liatris Pycnostachya). 

 If anyone knows a butterfly magnet to 

 equal it I wish he would tell me. 



Lafcadio Hearn has a delightful study 

 of the musical insects of Japan which are 

 raised and sold in cages. More practical 

 for us is Mrs. Comstock's chapter on 

 "Pipers and Minnesingers" in "Ways of 

 the Six-footed." The finest singers among 

 the insects are the bees. The quaint old 

 beehives in English gardens are not only 

 picturesque but furnish a mellow and 

 soothing hum. Bees are popularly supposed 

 to have an affinity for flowers and the labiate 

 type flower is certainly adapted to them. 

 Nearly every garden contains some labiates, 

 or members of the mint family, e. g., thyme, 

 lavender, bugle, beebalm, or obedient 

 plant. There are plenty of other plants 

 in every garden to attract bees, but if you do 

 not know Salvia pratense I wish you would 

 try it. For then you will be sure of a good 

 humming all day long and it is a brave sight 

 to watch the stamens suddenly spring forth 

 from their places of concealment and rub the 

 backs of the bees with their golden pollen! 



I like to close these articles with a list of 

 the best books that may help a student fur- 

 ther, but in this case I am at a loss. Nature 

 is more wonderful than any account of it, 

 and the full beauty of gardens can never be 

 gotten into books. If you wish to make 

 your garden more pictorial go to the nurser- 

 ies now and see plants. Then go to gar- 

 dens where they are artistically combined. 



The first half of September is an excellent 

 time to set out new plants of perennials, 

 excepting chrysanthemums, anemones and 

 a few others. And if you wish to raise 

 perennials from seed the best article I know 

 of is "Flower Seeds for Present Sowing" 

 by Mr. McCollom in The Garden Maga- 

 zine for October 1908. Seeds of perennials 

 are easily and cheaply imported from 

 Europe, for they are light and there is no 

 duty on them. 



Crambe orientals, a relative of the seakale which grows five to seven feet high and produces clouds of 



white bloom 



