The Garden Magazine, August, 1919 



Their silvery foliage and cool blue flower heads are a relief to 

 the eye amidst the warm coloring of the summer garden. 

 Mulleins do very well under dry conditions and are always 

 picturesque and striking in the garden. 1 do not mean our 

 common roadside Mullein, though even this is a plant of 

 distinction and charm, but the fine fellows from over seas and 

 the hybrids created from them. 



Perhaps the finest of all the garden Mulleins is Ver- 

 bascum olympicum, the Greek Mullein, with a towering stalk 

 topped by a candelabra of pale yellow blossoms that remain 

 alight for at least six weeks at midsummer. V. phlomoides is 

 another handsome sort with yellow flowers and there is a fine 

 hybrid, Miss Willmott, whose stalk is threaded with creamy 

 white blossoms. There are numerous other good hybrids 

 with bronze, apricot, or yellow flowers. V. phoeniceum is 

 lower growing than an)- of the foregoing. It sends up a stalk 

 not more than three feet in height bearing round blossoms in 

 soft colors, rose, mauve, buff, pink or cream. All theseplants 

 are easily raised from seed, and though biennial in character 

 seed themselves so freely that there is no trouble in keeping 

 up a stock. 



The Kansas Gay-feathers, being prairie born, are inured 

 to drought and prefer it. It took me some time to grasp this 

 fact concerning them and year after year 1 lost the plants set 

 out in rich heavy borders. Both Liatris pychnostachya and 

 L. scariosa are exceedingly decorative plants of medium 

 height (3 to 4 ft.). 



Lupines too prefer a dry situation (and .a poor soil, in 

 fact) and are longer lived and less prone to disease un- 

 der such conditions; indeed they will flourish amazingly. 

 Flag Irises in all their many beautiful varieties are plants 

 that are little affected by drought, nor are the gorgeous 

 Oriental Poppies, nor the various Anchusas. 1 n fact Anchusa 

 myosotidiflora, 1 have found to be perfectly hardy only in 

 the dryest situations. The annual Alkanet (Anchusa cap- 

 ensis) is also useful in a dry situation, as are California 

 Poppies, Verbenas, Petunias, Marigolds, Zinnias, Portulaca, 

 Sweet Tobacco, Mexican Poppy (Argemone mexicana), and 

 Balsams, to name a few annuals. 



Following is a list of a few other plants that may be counted 

 upon during seasons of dry weather or when planted in parti- 

 cularly dry situations: 



Beardless Irises 

 That We Can 

 Have. 



All the Scdums and Yuccas in variety 



Sempervivums Helianthemum in 



Cheiranthus Allioni variety 



Santolina incana Euphorbia poly- 



Artimisia Abrotanum chroma 



Nepeta Mussini 

 Salvia pratensis 

 Salvia azurea 

 Linaria dalmatica 

 Platycodon grandi- 

 Artimisia Stelleriana Erigeron speciosus florum 



Stachys lanata Achillea filipendulina Glaucium flavum 



All Evening Primroses are good drought resisters, but not 

 all are sufficiently circumspect in their behavior to make them 

 good garden plants. Many are quite too rampageous and 

 weedy and others seed so freely that they deserve to be 

 called weeds. Two, however, are fit for any company: 

 Oenothera fruticosa, eighteen inches tall with large soft 

 yellow blossoms borne over a long period at midsummer, 

 and O. speciosa, somewhat dwarfer, with satiny white blos- 

 soms that turn pink in fading. Both theseplants are rather 

 strong spreaders from the root and should be planted with 

 this fact in mind. 



17 



THERE has been in my garden 

 this summer an unusually fine 

 display of some of the Beardless Irises. 

 Just why they should have been incited 

 to a more than ordinary floriferousness 1 do not know; unless 

 the generous rainfall that has been vouchsafed my section of 

 the country may have had something to do with it. At any 

 rate 1 am moved to say that this class of Irises does not re- 

 ceive the recognition that it deserves. I took a few stalks of 

 I. aurea and 1. spuria to the garden club to which I belong 

 and which is composed of women of considerably more 

 than elementary garden knowledge, and only one knew 

 what they were beyond the fact that they were some 

 sort of Iris. 



My favorite is I. aurea — not to be confounded with the 

 good yellow Iris of the variegata section of the Flag Irises — 

 with stout bright green narrow foliage and a strong stem 

 rising well clear of the foliage and bright golden-yellow blos- 

 soms, large, well poised and with the segments daintily 

 crimped. It has proved with me a fine border plant, not 

 dependent upon the damp situation generally claimed for it, 

 but enjoying a rather stiff, retentive soil. It blooms late,: 

 about the time of the Japanese Irises and just before I. 

 ochroleuca, also a tall, strong growing plant of the Beardless 

 group bearing ivory white blossoms, yellow at the throat and 

 of heavy texture. This plant with me has never flowered as 

 freely as Iris aurea or some of the others but it is well worth 

 growing. 



The various forms of I. spuria and I. Gueldenstaedtiana 

 closely allied to it are also delightful and with me very free 

 flowering in ordinary rather heavy loam. The flowers are 

 closely crowded on the tall stems and delightfully fashioned. 

 There is a charming form called A. W. Tate, soft lavender, a 

 lovely pure white with a yellow throat and several others. 

 The type is rather dark blue in color. I. Wilsoni is a new 

 yellow-flowered Iris belonging to this group that is said to be 

 much like the slender growing sibericas. I have a thrifty 

 plant of it but it has not yet flowered. Then there is Sir 

 Michael Foster's fine group, monspur, Monnieri and mon- 

 aurea. They are all tall and strong growing, giving their 

 blossoms after the Flag Irises are past. Monspur is an 

 Iris of unusual gaiety of coloring — bright blue and bright 

 yellow — and with me has always bloomed with the utmost 

 freedom. 



Our own gay little Meadow Iris belongs to this beardless 

 group and while it is a bit too free for garden purposes it is 

 lovely enough in the moist meadows where it forms great 

 cloud-like masses. And there are other fine American species 

 also belonging to it that we Americans should know more 

 about. There is Iris fulva, the blossoms of which are a rich 

 mahogany, and small and delicate and poised as some strange 

 butterfly; there is Iris prismatica, said to be like a small 

 versicolor, Iris hexagona, Iris missouriensis from the North- 

 west and others. 



In our preoccupation with the steadily rising tide of beauty 

 in the Flag Irises, let us not forget these others. They are so 

 different in form from the Flag Irises that they in no way 

 compete with them, they thrive in situations that are not 

 suited to the former and knowledge of them will, I think, in 

 all cases make for a deeper love and admiration of this most 

 entrancing of flower families. 



