16 



HOME AND FLOWERS 



today than these same old Marigolds, 

 which have not greatly changed since the 

 time when onr grandmothers grew them. 

 Give them a place in your garden for one 

 season, and yon will not willingly be 

 without them afterward. 



I can not remember a time when Sweet 

 Peas were not favorites with all flower 

 lovers. In every garden there was sure 

 to be a row of them, with brush for a 

 support. Have you ever noticed how 

 strong a liking this flower has for a sup- 

 port of that kind? It positively refuses 

 to take hold of a string. It has to be tied 

 up to a lattice, and will have nothing to 

 do with a wire netting until it makes up 

 its mind it must be that or nothing. But 

 give it some brush to clamber over, and it 

 fairly runs riot in luxuriant growth. In 

 our grandmothers' day there were but 

 few varieties, but these were almost as 

 beautiful and quite as fragrant as the 

 "improved" ones of the present. If you 

 w^ould grow Sweet Peas well, sow the seed 

 as early as possible in spring, in Y-shaped 

 trenches five or six inches deep, covering 

 it with an inch of soil at first. As the 

 plants reach up draw in a little more soil, 

 and keep on doing this until all the soil 

 taken from the trench is returned to it. 

 This gets the roots of the plants down in 

 the earth where they will be cool and damp 

 when midsummer weather is with us, and 

 on this depends success to a great extent. 

 Shallow-rooted plants succumb to the first 

 intensely hot weather of the season, but 

 plants grown as advised will continue to 

 bloom until frost comes if they are not 

 allowed to ripen seed. 

 - And the Poppies ! There was no "Shir- 

 ley strain," no "Iceland variety," when 

 I was a boy, but there were great fluffy 

 ones ^ith. fringed petals, some of dark 

 crimson, some of pure white with the 

 fringe of their petals stained with red, as 

 if the artist who designed them had lightly 

 brushed the snowy flower over with con- 

 trasting pigments. All I have to do to 

 grow these charming flowers is to gather 

 seed in fall and scatter it in spring, and 



keep the weeds down about them. If you 

 want a good flower for cutting, be sure to 

 try some of the old-fashioned Poppies. 



^^owadays we grow Zinnias — flowers 

 rivaling the Dahlia in size and form and 

 brilliance of color — but in grandmother's 

 time they went by the name of "Youth 

 and Old Age." They were given this 

 name because of a trick they had of put- 

 ting forth new petals after the old ones 

 were faded, so that the same flower had 

 in it the contrasts of youth and age. The 

 Zinnia of today is a much showier flower, 

 and an excellent one for the amateur to 

 experiment with. Planted in masses, it 

 gives a magnificent effect when seen from 

 a respectful distance. For hedges between 

 the flower and vegetable garden it is su- 

 perior to any other plant, but it is too 

 coarse to grow near the house. 



In the old "Johnny- Jump-Up" we had 

 material out of which that modern wizard,, 

 the florist, has evolved that most magnifi- 

 cent flower, the Pansy. In it there was 

 only a suggestion of what might be, a hint 

 of what was to come, but it was a general 

 favorite, especially with the children, for 

 whom it seemed to have a sort of affinity. 

 Looking back to it, with its narrow petals 

 and its limited range of color, we begin 

 to understand something of what the 

 florists have been doing in the floral world. 

 N'ot all flowers are "improved" by a gain 

 in size, or a multiplication of petals, but 

 we must admit that the Pansy of today 

 is a vast improvement on the modest little 

 "Johnny- Jump-I"p," for the modern 

 Pansy is a most royal flower. 



Ragged Robin, or Love-in-a-Mist, was 

 one of the old stand-bys. So was the 

 "Sturtion," the forerunner of the ^^astur- 

 tium of today. As I remember it, it was 

 an inferior flower, and housewives prized 

 it more for its peppery-pungent seeds, 

 which were used to give flavor to pickles, 

 than for its blossoms. Mourning Bride 

 had a place in all gardens, and so had 

 Larkspur, and Bachelor's Buttons, blue 

 and pink and white. All these would be 

 as popular today as they were then, if we 



