The Misuse of the Canna 
Place: a train. Time: late summer. We are stopping at a 
small station whose rectangle of parks is supposed to be well 
set off by a circle of Cannas, scarlet and yellow, in full bloom. 
When I see today this use of Cannas on private or on public 
grounds I look for their accomplices, scarlet Salvias, Blue 
Spruces, golden-leaved shrubs — all that array of stuff which is 
so often palmed off upon the public. The round bed of Cannas 
bespeaks a third-rate taste in gardening and the flowers thus 
used are utterly out of place. 
Usually the use of the Canna in our towns is due to certain 
florists' books which to this day show forth designs for plantings 
of detached round beds of these plants; some of our best seeds- 
men still publish such plans for bulbs. It is a pity! It is 
a great chance for beauty missed. The florist teaches his men 
to use these designs; our city parks are filled with results; the 
wrong object lesson is given to a neighborhood; the wrong thing 
spreads like wildfire. 
Of course there is a right use of the Canna as there is for ev- 
ery growing thing. I recall Miss Marcia Hale's lovely placing and 
grouping of the bronze-leaved type in a columnar effect to flank 
trellis openings against a distant prospect in the garden of Miss 
Porter's school at Farmington; Miss Jekyll's nice planting of 
Cannas with scarlet Geranium in a decorative manner in the 
early days of Munstead Wood; and the charming arrangements 
of the pale yellow and flame-pink varieties in the gardens of our 
own amateurs in combinations of true felicity with other flowers. 
The Canna 's sub-tropic look makes it difficult for use in the 
temperate zone. In all but the cleverest hands the result is a 
horror. 
The Gaeden Club of America might bring to bear a 
beneficent influence on this disturbing habit of Canna-planting 
if it would go to its local florists in towns where the habit 
prevails and would say to them : " In fairness to you and your 
orders we wish to say to you that we shall from now on speak 
against the Canna as commonly planted; we shall endeavor to 
persuade people to substitute for this bulb fine greensward, quiet 
plantings of rich and permanent shrubbery, and to supplement 
these where color is needed by the more suitable, permanent and 
inexpensive perennial flowers." Soon a change would come 
where such a course is pursued, and as I am endeavoring to 
practice this course where I live and move and have my seeing, 
I feel more than willing to recommend it. 
If this outburst is too violent, will not some reader please say 
so in these pages? A discussion of the matter would be much 
more useful than one person's vehement expression. Will not 
those who disagree send their opinions to Mrs. McKnight that we 
may have a little Canna symposium ? Louisa Y. King. 
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