The Garden Magazine, August, 1924 
425 
JAPANESE AST 1 LBE 
Though most commonly known 
as a florist's plant, the Astilbe is 
a perfectly hardy perennial and 
is easily grown in any well-made 
border. The Japanese variety 
shown here has feathery plumes 
of white very effective in the 
summer garden 
The stocks should be planted in rows i foot asunder and i foot apart 
and should be grafted after four years or more. 
Crown-grafting is the most common and the easiest to perform. The 
season for performing this operation is from the 20th to the 30th of 
September at the middle of Japan. It is treated in the following wav: 
1. Dig up the stock, heading down at 1^ inches from the root. A small notch 
or shoulder cut in the upper part will serve to rest the scion better on the stock. 
The scions are pieces of the healthy branch from 1 inch to 2 inches long. The 
upper half should have two or three eyes; the lower half is cut with a flat sloping 
slice-cut, which should begin opposite to an eye and end in a thin point. The 
nurserymen seem to prefer the scions that are taken from the top of the branches 
of last year's grafts. 
2. The scion is inserted into the top of the stock between the bark and the 
wood as soon as the scion is prepared. 
3. It should be tightly bound after the insertion of the scion with a ramie- 
hemp and section of the stock covered with an oil-paper. After this operation 
a hemp-palm rope is wrapped firmly on the point of junction. 
4. Then plant in a prepared place and put a bamboo tube over as shown 
in the drawing on page 424. To keep the soil dry and warm put a piece of a 
tile above the Bamboo tube as a protection from rain. 
3. When spring comes the tile may be taken away. The bamboo tube is left 
in place till the bud has grown 1 foot long. 
Next year’s spring brings recompense to the plant-lover for his labor 
in grafting a “gentle scion to the wildest stock.” I will recommend the 
above-mentioned method to the garden neighbors in America as it is 
successful in our land—the Orient.— Kanichiro Yashiroda, Japan. 
Can Iris Change Its Clothes? 
To the Editors of The Garden Magazine: 
BOUT ten years ago my niece sent me from Mt. Kisco some Iris 
roots of a most enchanting lavender color. She had her stock 
from our old doctor who is long since dead and who lived at Mt. Kisco. 
He had his supply from his grandmother’s garden which was situated 
on the Hudson near Ossining. 1 give you this history to show you 
that the plant is of old established stock. Ours has bloomed and we 
have enjoyed its beauty; but this summer every blossom has been a 
dark royal purple like those of a clump of that color about fifteen or 
more feet diagonally away. A white Iris about six feet away from the 
purple is also showing one or two purple blooms while the purple seems 
to be changing to white. 
Why should these plants not be satisfied with their own clothes? 
One does not want all the Iris alike. I have just been looking at a 
clump of the lavender planted at least forty feet from a clump of the 
purple and diagonally opposite and in a situation where the bloom is 
later. These buds show many dark ones while some are light and 1 
fancy will prove the right color. Please tell me why these old things 
should behave so and if there is any hope of being able to restore them? 
—Camilla L. Edwards, Wainscott, L. I. 
Some Rare Spring Effects that Would Be Missed 
To the Editors of The Garden Magazine: 
AVE you tried naturalizing Daffodils against a background of 
Forsythia? The yellow and white, or yellow trumpets loom their 
best. We have put down slips of Forsythia everywhere so when the 
robins arrive our corner looks as if spring had come in good earnest. In 
front of a group of slim pale Birches gleams Lucifer, “Star of the 
Morning,” a brilliant Narcissus with orange-scarlet crown, and snowy 
perianth. How it glistens its nodding welcome on a dark morning in 
early spring! Everyone can have flowers in summer, but after the long 
hard winter is the time when a gay little flower lightens a body’s heart. 
Combine it too with yellow Cowslips and sweet English Violets or 
Gold-laced Polyanthus. 
Remember those nodding white plumes in the florists’ windows 
around Eastertide in years gone by?—planted in the border and watered 
religiously they proved a welcome addition to a bunch of Hybrid-tea 
Rosebuds. After many years they are in the catalogues once more and 
1 am promising myself a treat in Astilbe Peachblossom to take its place 
