NEWCOMERS OF NOTE 
FOR THE HARDY GARDEN 
STEPHEN F. HAMBLIN 
Instructor in Horticulture Harvard School of Landscape Architecture 
Five Excellent New Perennials for Autumn 
Editors’ Note: Even the traditional favorites of “grandmother’s garden’’ at some point in far-away times exchanged their garb of sentiment for the sheer 
charm of novelty—incredible as it may seem the Hollyhock and its contemporaries, for generations interwoven through story and song, once had “ news value”! And 
discoveries in the plant world march along with progress in general so that our gardens need never suffer the paralysis of staticism, for which boon the saints be 
praised—a thing finished is a thing dead, so far as interest or enthusiasm is concerned. 
Among flower novelties many may prove mediocre, and a few superlatively good; but all have the allure of the unknown quantity, and one of gardening’s chief- 
est thrills lies in testing out the stranger-at-the-gate for permanent admittance or rejection. Much preliminary sifting has already been done for us by Mr. Hamblin, 
so that only the selected best comes to notice in his notes and thus our readers get the benefit of appraisal by a disinterested critic and friend of plants—a 
happy opportunity for advance information about flowers and herbs often as yet unlisted in general catalogues and too newly arrived to be found in the still more con¬ 
servative records of books. 
All who try out new garden flowers are asked to send in estimates of their values in the garden and experiences in their culture, giving some history of their in¬ 
troduction and advising the Editors of present source of supply. Thus we shall have a clearing-house of information and publicity that will widely increase the use 
of really desirable plants. If some do not come up to advertised virtues, let us state their failings frankly. To be truly helpful, personal observation only should guide 
our discussion. Errors in names may be quite excusable, for the same plant is sometimes bought under different names, and different plants under the same name, 
especially those not well known in the trade. We must clear away this confusion everywhere we can. 
[EW PLANTS are continually making their appearance 
and clamoring for a foothold among their fellows in 
American gardens. Sometimes they are brought by 
collectors from distant lands. (See “Travel Tales of a 
Plant Collector” by Ernest H. Wilson, January and February, 
also pages 35-38 of this issue.) Now and again some native of the 
Great Plains, the Rockies, the Pacific Slope, or the Southern 
Alleghenies awakens interest, but unless within the field of 
such active organizations as the Rose, Iris, and Peony Societies, 
or winning a quick commercial fame through the efforts of some 
nurseryman to put it on the market, even a plant of distinct 
merit may remain unknown for years. 
The English custom of having at Flower Shows a special com¬ 
mittee and special awards for novelties does much to stim¬ 
ulate interest in the new plants by bringing them into public 
notice—why not establish something similar over here? 
Ornamental trees and shrubs are 
well provided for at the Arnold 
Arboretum, and plants that have 
a utilitarian aspect find place in 
the eight or more field stations of 
the Department of Agriculture, 
but herbaceous flowers, whose sole 
reason for being is to please the 
eye, get inadequate consideration. 
A few are grown in the Botanic 
Gardens at Harvard, Brooklyn, 
St. Louis, and elsewhere; a few get 
their chance through the enthus¬ 
iasm of private experimenters, 
but the great bulk of fresh mate¬ 
rial discovered in other lands is for 
the most part debarred from us by 
the stringent negations of the De¬ 
partment of Agriculture under 
its present regime. Only limited 
quantities of actual plants for 
propagation (not for resale) are 
allowed to be imported by any of 
the nurseries, with no permits to 
amateurs, though seed (if obtain¬ 
able) is permitted to come through. 
A Chinese Anemone 
T HE Japanese Anemone is 
firmly established in our affec¬ 
tions. A similar plant from China, 
Anemone hupehensis, has even 
LATE-BLOOMING BUGBANE (CIM 1 CIFUGA SIMPLEX) 
“A welcohie relief from the mob of autumn composites ” the Cimici- 
fuga lifts its long white curved racemes to a height of six feet. Here 
shown growing in late October in a garden near Newport, R. I. 
greater virtues. I n habit it is very like its Japanese relative, but 
more slender, dwarfer (about one foot), and begins to bloom in 
August, a whole month earlier, and thus can be enjoyed in 
Northern gardens before touched by frost. The flowers are not 
so large, of a light pink-purple, but will soon yield to man’s 
improving hand. Except for its time of bloom and lower stature 
it is very like the first Japanese Anemone. One other advant¬ 
age—it is apparently very hardy, and easier to grow; and, since 
it is readily increased from small divisions of the root, it should 
become common in gardens very soon. 
A Still Hardier Chrysanthemum 
T HE difficulty of our modern “hardy” Chrysanthemums 
(C. hortorum) even in the Pompom forms for Northern 
gardens, is their desire to rot away in winter in heavy soils and 
to get frozen in full bloom by hard frosts of early October, 
unless protected. A new, more 
northern species from Corea, C. 
sihiricum, has neither of these 
objections. To the casual observer 
it is very similar, but it is very 
woody at the base and may be 
considered a shrub, though the 
sprouts from below ground bloom 
better than do stems that have 
stood the winter. The leaves, ex¬ 
cept in early spring, are very green 
both sides, and that is about the 
only distinguishing mark during 
the summer. I n mid-September (at 
Boston) a cloud of small white (or 
pink) daisy-like bloom covers the 
plant, at a height of about two feet, 
for four weeks. In light soils the 
rays are white, but in some places 
the rays are deep pink; a greater 
color range and doubling may be 
expected. Wonderful for edging in 
the border, it is superb as a cut- 
flower, sure to bloom heavily, and 
hardy even in heavy clay at Boston. 
For Northern gardens as a hardy 
plant it will displace even the 
so-called hardy forms of florists' 
Chrysanthemum. Its first ap¬ 
pearance in this country was 
in the collection of Chinese 
plants in the Arnold Arboretum, 
39 
