da Vinci loved to paint it and the Acorn centuries ago. ] 



The hybrids have come with longer spurs and many hues, 

 flowers of distinction and grace, but by no great artist in the far 

 past have they been painted. The new blue hybrids are almost 

 exotic in appearance and they are just as blue, and shaded pale 

 and gray-blue as the rarely beautiful Dutch Irises that tempt 

 us in the florists' windows. There are shades other than blue — j 

 flesh, rose, mandarin, royal purple, white, gold, and gold with 

 scarlet. j 



If you will start the seed in June in flats or in a shaded spot 

 in the garden, you can in September transplant sturdy, hardy, un- 

 afraid-of-the- Winter young plants (not seedlings) everywhere 

 you wish to see Columbines growing. A hill-side planting of 

 German Iris and Hybrid Columbines I know of is a joy to behold. 



There are no bronze or brown or purple Iris here. The tall 

 Pallida Dalmatica, a tender lavender growing nearly four feet 

 tall, hundreds of them grew on the highest point. Mme. Chereau, 

 frilly and feminine (there is no lovelier Iris), white with frills of 

 blue; Her Majesty, a distinguished bloom of pink; Ingeborg, pro- 

 ducing great white flowers; Queen of May, rose-mauve; Inno- 

 cenza, pearly white; La Tendre, lavender and gold; Trautlieb, 

 rosy pearl; Rembrandt, soft old blue; Miralba, rose, lavender and 

 pearl ; Sapho, white and mauve with Bariensis completing the 

 varieties, planted in groups unstudied in effect with masses, large 

 and small, of all the Columbines intermingled. 



A curtain of blue flowering Periwinkle showers over the low- 

 est point into the roadside where it is kept sheared. Neither the 

 Columbine nor the German Iris is capricious. The Iris multi- 

 plies and spreads while the Columbines self -sow, assuring renewed 

 beauty year after year. 



A group of evergreens were stately guardians above the Iris; 

 on the hill were hemlocks, feathery and fine. 



The Columbine is the Queen of the Spring flowers, and in- 

 deed few flowers can equal its delicate beauty and grace, and it 

 blooms for nearly three months in almost any kind of soil. Its 



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