September, 1905 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



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THE almost entire exclusion of the great wealth of hardy plants from American gardens in favor of a few — 

 hardly a score — of tender ones has so impoverished tli3Fn of all real beauty as to make them monotonous. In 

 almost every garden are seen the same stereotyped carpet and ribbon beds, mere lines of color, that are a? 

 unchanging during their season of four months as the patterns of carpet, and that perish entirely with the first 

 frost. The entire labor and expense is renewed the next season, and the annual outlay is limited only by one's 

 willingness or ability to pay. Hardy flowers have all the artistic advantages and all the practical ones as well. Their 

 first cost being their only cost, and their greatly increasing in size and beauty 3'ear after year, make an investment in them 

 yield an annual dividend of loveliness not to be computed in any ordinary way. 



We have seen a garden where early spring is ushered in with myriads of snowdrops, crocuses and violets 

 peeping through the grass, with yellow daffodils and scarlet tulips, with rarest blue of scillas, and with odor of 

 hyacinths; and later with hhes-of-the-valley, and lilac, and hawthorns, and numerous flowering shrubs. June — the 

 month of flowers — finds our garden fairly aglow with floral beauty, roses everywhere, in groups, on fences, sprawling 

 on the grass with their wreaths of loveliness, clambering over bushes, and here and there covering even the tops of 

 the trees with flowers of pink or white bloom. Not only roses, but monarch poppies, peonies, columbines, early- 

 flowering clematises and irises in a multitude, and Easter lilies in all their purity, and the grand rhododendrons, second 

 only to roses, and with them, later, the glorious Auratum lilies showing stately above their rich greens. 



With this grand June overture to summer, our garden follows quickly with a succession of lcvely and changing 

 scenes — of day lilies, hardy pinks, exquisite Japan irises, and a procession of stately lilies, commencing with June 

 and ending only with frost: of phloxes, hollyhocks — single and double — and clematises with their wreaths and garlands 

 of purples, pinks and whites : of foxgloves, larkspurs and evening primroses ; and our garden, daily, until frost, will have 

 new attraction. 



Arranged with some judgment at first, this garden might be left to take care of itself ; time would but add to its 

 attractions, and the happy owner might go away for years and find it beautiful on his return. 



We have gathered together the best collection of hardy plants and bulbs in America, and will send catalogue and 

 information about hardy gardens on request. 



"A Plea for Hardy Plants," by J. Wilkinson Elliott, gives much information about hardy gardens, with plans for 

 their arrangement. We have made arrangements with the publishers of this book to furnish it to our customers at a very 

 low price. Particulars will be sent on request. 





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