BORDER CARNATIONS. 
45 
Society will remember the wonderful exhibits of these gentlemen 
between the years 1899 and 1909. Yet even at this time, a fine- 
petalled flower was sure to find a place with the chosen few from the 
seedling bed, without too many questions being asked as to its other 
qualifications to rank as a Hardy Border Carnation. So that, although 
the race had been immensely improved in constitution and the highest 
standard of form established, an ideal border habit was not generally 
characteristic of them ; for, although it is good to produce 
magnificently formed flowers that can win in strong competition, 
there is much else essential to the Border Carnation. My own views 
of what an ideal Border Carnation should be are as follow : 
First, and all-important, is the stem that bears the flower. This 
should be perfectly rigid and capable of bearing the flowers erect with- 
out the necessity of using stakes ; the bloom itself should possess a sound 
long calyx not overcrowded with petals, for it must be remembered 
that the flower will be exposed to rain, and buds crowded with petals 
often rot ere they can expand, owing to the wet. Of course the 
calyx should be strong enough to enclose and sustain the petals with- 
out bursting. 
Secondly, all Border Carnations should be sweetly scented, and 
if possible, clpve -scented. We are making this a great point now, 
and have already Cloves in every shade except yellow. I have 
never yet seen a yellow Carnation that possessed a scent, even in 
a faint degree. The following varieties are of the strongest Clove 
scent and represent a few of the best and most popular kinds : 
' My Clove ' (shell pink) ; ' Bookham Clove ' (real old Clove 
colour) ; ' Ellen Douglas ' (silver grey or lavender) ; ' Surrey Clove ' 
(maroon) ; ' Mrs. Andrew Brotherstone ' (fancy) ; ' Distinction ' 
(fancy) ; ' Lady Hermione ' (a fine old salmon variety). 
' Bookham Clove ' is quite the strongest Clove-scented Carnation 
I have ever seen, and it owes its existence to a mild challenge thrown 
out by a colonial lady who came to England on a visit. She asked 
me one day what had become of the real old Clove of her girlhood 
days, asserting emphatically that most of the so-called ' Old Cloves ■ 
were different in colour and not the true Clove of fifty years ago ; 
adding that the Edenside collection held no such gem as the ' Old 
Clove ' of her father's Herefordshire garden, and that this genuine ' Old 
Clove ' had a scent distinct from any other Carnation or any other so- 
called Clove that she had seen on her last visit to the old country. 
Nearly a year after I had an opportunity of acquiring two plants 
from a stock that had been carefully preserved in this old Herefordshire 
garden for sixty years. 1 was rather surprised to find my lady visitor's 
account perfectly true in every respect. The bloom from these two 
plants, instead of being the dull maroon peculiar to the Clove one 
finds in the cottage gardens of Surrey, was of a beautiful dark crimson- 
purple showing a glow of almost a wine shade, but the scent of those 
blooms was perfectly wonderful, the two blooms strongly perfuming 
a dining-room 22 feet by 18. Strange to say, the Clove perfume was 
