HOUSE AND GARDEN 
April, 1913 
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Trade Mark Regd. in U. S. Pat. Off and Canada 
The Most Artistic and Permanent 
Building Material in the World 
Start a Fernery. 
Brighten up the deep, shady nooks on your lawn, or that dark 
porch corner—just the places for our hardy wild ferns and wild flower 
collections. We have been growing them for 25 years and know 
what varieties are suited to your conditions. Tell us the kind 
of soil you have — light, sandy, clay—and we will advise you. 
Gillett’s Ferns and Flowers 
will give the charm of nature to your yard. These include not only hardy wild 
ferns, but native orchids, and flowers for wet and swampy spots, rocky hillsides 
and dry woods. We also grow such hardy flowers as primroses, campanulas, 
digitalis, violets, hepaticas, trilliums, and wild flowers which require open sunlight 
well as shade. If you want a bit of an old-time wildwood garden, with flowers 
ust as Nature grows them—send for our new catalogue and let us advise you 
what to select and how to succeed with them. 
EDWARD GILLETTE Box B, South wick. Mass. 
filling gaps in the garden, and the other 
is to solve the problem of those perennials, 
including some bulbous and tuberous 
plants, that are unreliable and of question¬ 
able hardiness. Among the latter are 
several of the loveliest windflowers — Ane¬ 
mone sylvestris, A. blanda, A. St. Brigid 
and A. fulgens; the turban and Lebanon 
ranunculas and Rehmannia angulata. 
These, as well as the various hellebores 
known as Christmas and Lent roses—- 
which, if they survive the winter in the 
open, do not always bloom satisfactorily 
in December, January, and March — may 
be grown in pots and sunk in ashes in a 
tight coldframe or kept cool indoors until 
brought out to bloom. 
Some perennials hold strictly to species. 
Others have a perplexing number of varie¬ 
ties, the peony, Phlox paniculata, pyreth- 
rum and larkspur running up into hun¬ 
dreds, where the original type may be lost 
altogether in cultivation. Where there is 
a choice of varieties, seek out the best. 
There is the greatest difference in the 
world, both as to size and color of bloom, 
between the best of the peonies, phloxes, 
pyrethrums and larkspurs and those that 
are neither bad nor yet very good. Of the 
best select not many kinds; a dozen plants 
each of the new, double, pale pink pyreth- 
rum, Queen Mary, and as many more of 
that admirable double white, Carl Vogt, 
make a much finer showing than a mix¬ 
ture of two each of twelve varieties. 
So, too, a massing of the F estiva Maxi¬ 
ma peony or the old-fashioned red "piny” 
is better than the same number of plants 
in varied assortment, while Phlox pani¬ 
culata loses half its effectiveness when 
there is not a generous grouping of one 
kind. 
Not only be chary of varieties in the 
hardy garden and borders, but use the 
same restraint as to the multiplication of 
species. The wonderful big notes are 
struck by solid effects such as are to be 
found in nature. Bring your stock of 
Phlox divaricata —the type color — or 
Alyssum saxatile up to one hundred 
plants, which is easily done in .a few years. 
Set them out in a long narrow drift of 
each and the point will be plainly appar¬ 
ent. This course does not call for the 
slighting of other desired perennials ; they 
can be grouped as fillers, or used in the 
reserve garden and odd spots on the place. 
Often space by the south or east wall of a 
barn may be used for colonizing peren¬ 
nials not required for the garden. They 
make a fine show there because of the iso¬ 
lation and are always handy for cutting. 
Everything considered, perennials are 
the cheapest of all plant investments. Most 
of them increase so rapidly that in a few 
years the result makes the money laid out 
seem ridiculously small. A large number 
of the commonest kinds may be had at 
fifteen cents each and for less by the dozen 
or hundred. Novelties and rarities are sel¬ 
dom more than half a dollar in this coun¬ 
try, but in England all kinds of high prices 
are paid willingly and some of the 1912 
novelties cost twenty-four dollars each. 
In writing to advertisers please mention House and Garden. 
