Saving a Year on Perennials 
FALL PLANTING OF PERENNIALS TO SECURE AN ABUNDANCE 
OF BLOOM FOR NEXT SUMMER’S GARDEN—CARE OF THE 
PLANTS THROUGH THE WINTER—SOME OF THE BEST VARIETIES 
BY D. R. Edson 
Photographs by Nathan R. Graves and Thos. Marr 
D O you know that 
you can obtain 
full results with many 
perennials in next 
summer’s garden by planting now? And that, if you put it off 
till next spring, you will get no flowers until the year following? 
Many persons continue to set out, year after year, only those 
plants which last a single season, either in the belief that they 
must wait two years for results after sowing the seeds of hardy 
perennials, or under the impression that the only practical way 
of having such things as one finds in the hardy border is to buy 
the plants from a nursery at a price which, when they come to 
figure up their requirements, seems prohibitive. 
But neither of these ideas is correct. It is true that there are 
many things which you had much better get from the nursery¬ 
man than try to start yourself, and that there are some which 
will not bloom until they have had at least a full season’s growth. 
But on the other hand there are a large number of things which 
it is perfectly practicable to sow from seed and which, if planted 
now, will give you a splendid show¬ 
ing next year. Possibly, for instance, 
you have felt that at twenty cents 
apiece for plants you could not afford 
a row of hollyhocks to break the 
monotony of that bare house wall 
which is so painfully visible from the 
veranda. But with seeds at ten cents 
a package you certainly can afford as 
large a supply as you require if you 
are willing to take the time and 
trouble to grow them. And then 
there is the chastely beautiful Iceland 
poppy with its charming colors, and 
the more modest but none the less 
beautiful, gracefully poised columbine, 
the homely but ever lovable sweet 
William, and a score or more of 
others, a baker’s dozen of which you 
will find more fully described toward 
the close of this article. 
Possibly you have never stopped 
to consider what a great difference 
the use of a few hardy perennials 
would make in the appearance of 
your flower garden and in the place 
itself. I by no means disparage the 
use of the annuals and the bedding 
plants; but there are a number of the 
perennials for which none of these 
will serve even as a poor substitute. And then for out-of-the-way 
corners and in places where you would not ordinarily set out any 
flowers every spring, or where, if you did, they would succumb 
to drought and other unfavorable conditions the hardier peren¬ 
nials will come up year after year and will make a bright spot or 
cover an ugly view and yield a very big and practically perpetual 
dividend on the slight effort it would require to start some of 
them this fall. And the hardy border itself with its other en¬ 
trancing work of replanting, shifting about, striving after just 
the right combination and effects of color and restraining the 
too ambitious and lusty growers and coaxing along the more 
frail but not less charming ones — all this, if you have been de¬ 
sirous of possessing it, but felt it beyond your means, will cer¬ 
tainly be made available for you at the cost of a few packages 
of seeds, and the effort required to give them a good start now 
if you will try late summer planting. 
The work, from the mere fact that you may never have at¬ 
tempted it before, you should not be afraid to try. As a matter 
of fact, you will find it less work than growing some of the an¬ 
nuals that are more difficult to handle. Then what more con¬ 
venient time is there for doing this work than August or early 
in September ? Surely you have more time at your disposal now 
than you ever have in May or early June, when all those peren¬ 
nial operations which must be done at that time are insistently 
demanding your attention. 
“But,” you may object, “the weather is so hot and dry that I 
shall never be able to get the seeds to 
start.” 
Flot and dry it may be, but as the 
seeds are not to be sown where the 
plants are wanted to grow, and as a 
goodly number of them may be start¬ 
ed in a very small bed, it’ is not a 
difficult task to give them the proper 
conditions. Possibly you have no¬ 
ticed in midsummer or in early fall 
hundreds of seedlings starting up by 
themselves by old plants of foxglove, 
or hollyhocks or larkspur, and have 
wondered how in such dry weather 
they were able to make a start. Prob¬ 
ably you did not observe that they 
were springing up in the shade of 
their parent plants, where the ground 
had been kept a little more moist and 
much more friable than where, in the 
open spaces of the bed, it had been 
exposed to the full sun. To be sure 
of success with your summer and fall 
sown seeds you must furnish the seeds 
the same conditions — moisture and 
shade enough to insure strong germi¬ 
nation even in hot, dry weather. 
The first thing to do is to select 
the best place possible, remembering, 
of course, that your seed bed will need 
to be only a few feet square. The seed bed may be made up in 
the shade of a tree, but should not be formed in the soil to which 
the tree’s roots have access, as such soil is usually very much im¬ 
poverished. A better place to hunt for is one protected from 
high winds or beating rains, such as usually may be found on the 
southern exposure of some building, where a low framework, sav 
two or three feet high, can readily be constructed over the bed. 
Now is the time to study garden effects with an eye to 
planting for next year 
