THE AMATEUR’S FLOWER GARDEN. 
95 
measure from those who would know more of it than appears 
upon the surface. Let us for a moment consider the claims 
of the herbaceous border to better regard than is usually 
bestowed upon it. 
It is an important characteristic of the herbaceous border 
that its proper tenants are hardy plants that need no aid of 
glass or fuel for their preservation during the winter. Those 
who can be content with hardy plants alone may find it an 
agreeable and easy task to devote their glass-houses to the 
production of grapes, mushrooms, forced kidney beans, and 
other equally valuable delicacies, and supplement the hardy 
garden with a collection of Alpine flowers, a large number of 
wdaich can be better grown and more thoroughly enjoyed in 
an airy and unheated greenhouse than when planted on the 
rockery in the open air. The delights of spring may thus be 
antedated by the aid of glass, and suitable early-flowering 
Alpine plants and the open borders will present an abundance 
of flowers, from the time when the treacherous frosts have 
spent their spite upon vegetation until the chill of winter 
returns again. In the cultivation of bedding plants we may 
fairly reckon on a brilliant display for three months, and it 
may extend to four—say, from the 1st of June to the 30th of 
September, but the herbaceous border will be gay from the 
end of April to the middle of October, a period of six months, 
and will offer us a few flowers in February, and a few in No¬ 
vember and December, and in a mild winter will not be utterly 
flowerless even in January. It would be an exaggeration 
to say that the herbaceous border is capable of a display of 
flowers all the year round, but it is very nearly capable of a 
consummation So devoutly to be wished. To the advantages 
of hardiness and continuity of bloom must be added a third 
and grand qualification, of a distinguishing kind—that of 
variety. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the 
varieties of form, colour, and general character, amongst 
hardy herbaceous plants is without limit; but, as variety may 
be obtained amongst ugly plants, we are bound to add that 
the proper occupants of the garden we are considering are all 
beautiful, and a considerable proportion are well known 
favourites. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that with all 
their good claims to loving regard, the hardy herbaceous 
plants obtain but scant attention, and tens of thousands of 
persons who know that verbenas are somewhat showy when 
