VARIETY IN BORDER FLOWERS. 



2 39 



to the present-day grower of hardy flowers. The improvement has been immense, and 

 this, with the many new introductions, is an important factor in the present revived taste 

 for these flowers. 



In order to secure permanent favour for hardy flowers, there must be no narrow- 

 minded exclusion of those which are not, strictly speaking, herbaceous plants, but 

 instead a full recognition of the beauty and value of others which do not fall within that 

 category. Annuals, biennials, evergreen plants, roses, and other shrubs, bamboos, 

 grasses, and bulbous plants may all be admitted into the border with advantage to both 

 the flowers and their owner. Hardy 

 annuals arc particularly appropriate in 

 the border, and among them are many of 

 the greatest beauty which are rarely seen 

 in any garden. Several of these will sow 

 themselves after the first season and come 

 up from year to year, forming as truly 

 permanent occupants of the garden as the 

 pseony, monkshood, or the evening prim- 

 rose. The merits of these hardy flowers 

 are many, and though they have their 

 faults, their beauty, permanence, and 

 hardiness make them more and more 

 appreciated as they become familiar to us. 



There are the flowers of winter — the 

 snowdrop, the crocus, the scilla, the early 

 irises, the Greek and Apennine windflowers, and many others. There are those of the later 

 season, when the daffodil, the Crown Imperial, the tulip, the doronicum (Fig. 116), 

 and a host more of greater or lesser beauty, come to give us pleasure. There are the 

 campanulas, the evening primroses, the preonies, the irises, and the other and almost 

 countless plants of early and mid-summer, and when autumn comes the procession still 

 moves on until the sunflowers pass to their rest, leaving behind them the asters, 

 chrysanthemums, the meadow saffrons, or autumn crocuses, and a few others, including 

 the Christmas Eoses (Hellebores), to touch us with their beauty in the short days. 



They are of all statures and of all forms, these hardy flowers. Some are almost as 

 dwarf and as close-growing as the lichens or the mosses on the wall, some tower far 



Fig. 116. — DOEONICUM PLANTAGINEUM. 



