2 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS 



and in like manner we are continually having additions 

 made to our list of old-fashioned flowers. Many newly 

 discovered or newly introduced plants, therefore, are 

 treated of in this book, which is not intended merely as 

 a ''Book of Old Flowers." Still, as a matter of fact, 

 most of the flowers named in these pages are old favourites, 

 and have long been grown and sentimentalised over by 

 English gardeners and poets. 



No attempt has been made to render this a complete 

 handbook of hardy flowers. In the first place, the pages 

 at disposal would barely serve even to enumerate them, 

 and, in the second place, the compilation of a reference 

 encyclopaedia of hardy flowers has been done, and done 

 admirably, by our greatest gardening writer, Mr William 

 Robinson, whose book, *'The English Flower Garden," 

 is in many ways the most important work on gardening 

 which has appeared since the time of Parkinson. 



The flowers here named are but a few of those which 

 are worth growing, for to the present writer nearly every 

 plant, when allowed to develop freely and naturally, is 

 full of interest and full of beauty. Everyone should 

 decide for himself what he will grow in the particular 

 environment he may have to offer, for, once the art 

 of properly growing the flowers here named has been 

 mastered, little diflSculty need be anticipated in growing 

 such other hardy plants as may be thought desirable 

 additions to the list. 



In the matter of garden arrangement, I have neither 

 given dogmatic advice nor stated fixed rules which 

 must be followed ; for it is as undesirable that gardens 

 should be stereotyped copies of one another, as it would 

 be in the case of their owners. I have, instead of dog- 

 matising on the rights and wrongs of garden design, 

 described one or two gardens which have yielded me 

 delight, though I fear that I have not been able to 

 conceal my own point of view. What that point of view 



