8 
H ouse & Garden’s 
BUILDING THE HARDY BORDER 
From These Selections of Herbaceous Perennials One Can Have 
A Gorgeous Display Each Year 
N O scheme of garden building is at once 
so effective and so easily maintained as 
a hardy border. Perennial plants need seldom 
.to be renewed; in fact, it sooner becomes neces¬ 
sary to find an outlet for the overflow than to 
set in new plants. This overflow, if one has 
started out with choice named varieties, has a 
commercial value. A fuller satisfaction, how¬ 
ever, is discovered when one finds that there 
are enough plants to give away. For isn’t 
at least half the joy of possession the pleas¬ 
ure of sharing your abundance with an¬ 
other? Moreover, in the herbaceous plant¬ 
ing there is scarcely a dull moment. Growth 
starts with the earliest hint of warm weather 
and continues almost until snow flies. Dur¬ 
ing the first few weeks we have the interest 
of rapidly developing plants. From the 
time the earliest flowers come, in April or 
May, there is a succession of bloom until 
late fall. 
The garden lover looks forward to these 
recurring seasons as she anticipates the 
visit of an old friend. Association comes 
to hover about them, as about old books and 
the old haunts that one frequents. For the 
more prosaic there is the scientific interest 
in comparing the growth and performance 
of one year with another. By all means 
keep a note book. 
The most effective location for such a 
planting is, probably, along the far edge 
of the lawn, where it will be viewed mainly 
from the house. Such a border may be 
about the foundations of the house, though 
this is of all locations the least desirable as 
it will not be seen to advantage from the 
windows of the house. A backyard is a 
good situation, particularly if one can run the 
border about the yard and can spare ground 
for a bit of green, be it never so small, in the 
center. 
There is nothing more charming than a walk 
between two borders, the double border of 
English gardens, a feature of endless possi¬ 
bilities which we in America neglect almost 
The beautiful, creamy, white - flowered 
dwarf phlox Tapis Blanc is without a rival 
for its place in the very front of the border 
altogether. This type of border, however, al¬ 
lows a different planting than the more usual 
single border, for in this case less thought need 
be given to its effectiveness at a distance. One 
might almost characterize the planting as more 
intimate, for it is to be seen from near at hand, 
and the interest is more likely to be busied 
with single specimens than with the broad 
effect of the whole. It is this broad 
effect that should always be kept in mind 
when planning and executing the single 
border. 
The first principle to remember is that 
the best results are always to be obtained 
by simple and broad treatment. That it is 
better to paint from a simple palette, with 
a minimum of color mixing, is a maxim 
equally good for the painter and gardener. 
In either case, we are making a picture. 
The problem of the border is complicated 
by the fact that it is a series of pictures we 
must plan for. 
Growth in a border starts, of course, 
simultaneously with that of the grass and 
the leaves on the trees. This early growth 
shows a variety of light, delicate greens and 
reddish browns that not only are beautiful 
in themselves, but have great diversity in 
habit of growth and texture and shape of 
leaf. 
The earliest flowering plant is the lupin. 
Now the lupin (Polyphyllus, the perennial 
variety) comes in white, pink and blue. 
The white is a flower of exquisite purity 
and grace. The blue, however, runs to red¬ 
dish tones and the usual pink lupin rather 
suggests lavender. There is a recently in¬ 
troduced lupin of a purer pink that, in 
