HOUSE AND GARDEN 
M A Y , 
1912 
31 
An annual garden where there are straight and irregular beds, and the favorite petunias, phlox, and alyssum appear to the best advantage 
fail to offer unique joy and unique opportunity to its maker. 
The best kind of a garden of annuals—that is to say, for you — 
is not, primarily, the kind that you like best. This is one more of 
those dreadful truths about gardening that take one so long to 
learn. First of all, unless you are lucky enough to have a place 
that runs the entire gamut of site advantages, you must decide 
what is best for the home grounds rather than yield to your 
precise preference. Your neighbor, perhaps, may have a great 
rectangular layout, while for you the only course is the utilization 
of both sides of the wide walk that runs down through the vege¬ 
table patch. Xor is your 
neighbor necessarily more 
fortunate. Some of the 
most beautiful of these 
transitory gardens have 
been along a path “as 
crooked as a ram’s horn,” 
or random beds close by 
the vegetables, or borders 
defining the lawn or a 
mass of bloom snuggling 
up close to the side of the 
house. So keep taste un¬ 
til the last, and then use 
it unsparingly. 
The formal plantation 
of annuals is of all gar¬ 
dens of set pattern the 
least expensive and the 
least burdensome as to 
labor. Profuse bloom all 
summer may be assured 
and there is no bother¬ 
some winter protection 
called for. Furthermore, it may be changed completely every 
year. It is best when located in the rear of the house or well to 
one side, beyond the stretch of lawn; but if sunshine will not 
come to it in either place, it must go to the sunshine. Always it 
is well to have it at the end of a path of generous length—if not 
straight all the more pleasing—and either shrubbery or a hedge 
should frame it, or at least enough so as to give the air of a place 
apart. If flowers define the path to the garden let them be 
perennials by preference, so that the approach will not be bare 
spring and fall. For this bareness early and late is the one disad¬ 
vantage of the garden of 
annuals, unless it be 
avoided by the pleasur¬ 
able, and certainly quite 
pardonable, inconsistency 
of throwing spring bulbs 
and a few of the hardier 
bedding plants into that 
category. 
A formal garden de¬ 
sign should not be very 
intricate, unless the work¬ 
ing out of it is left to pro¬ 
fessional hands. One of 
the easiest patterns is to 
lay out two long narrow 
beds some distance apart, 
and fill the space between 
with shorter beds running 
the other way. None of 
the beds should be less 
than four feet wide, and 
six is better still. Three 
feet is little enough to 
The alyssum border forms a brilliant contrast of white against a grass path 
