Before planting one should get an idea of the height and spread of a plant before placing it in colonies. Cosmos, for instance, needs some tall 
companion and should be used in the background or to break a vista 
The Best Use of Annuals 
THE FUNCTIONS OF ANNUALS IN ROUNDING OUT FOR HARDY GARDENS—GUIDING 
SUGGESTIONS FOR PLANTING — VARIETIES THAT SHOULD BE BETTER KNOWN 
by H. S. Adams 
Photographs, by N. R. Graves 
B EST of all the uses of an¬ 
nuals is the most natural 
one—the employment of them 
to fill any spaces that hardy 
plants leave in the garden. Then, if the planting be naturalistic, 
the flower colony looks as though it had sprung up spontaneously. 
No one can be said really to know annuals who has not seen 
them in such plantings. Barring 
a few of the very stiff ones, they 
take on a grace and beauty—a 
final touch of both—that is lack¬ 
ing in the formality of set de¬ 
signs. It is the difference be¬ 
tween the irregularity of a 
dazzling patch of corn poppies in 
an English field and a circle, 
square or triangle of the same 
flowers cut out of a patch and 
removed where there is no more 
of the kind. 
Annuals thus employed are in¬ 
valuable to the hardy garden and 
borders. Even in the best 
regulated families, hardy 
plants cannot always be made 
The peony has been wonderfully improved in color and size, and 
is valuable for borders and edgings 
to cover every inch of the 
ground that they are required 
to fill unless they have ever¬ 
green foliage to begin with, and 
even then there may be perishing 
just the same. Spring bulbs die 
down after blooming, the early 
lilies soon turn brown — as do 
bleeding-heart, Oriental poppies 
and some other perennials. Not 
a year but there are bare spots 
that nature will strive to fill with 
weeds rather than have them 
bare. Here annuals are wel¬ 
comed. 
But it would be doing annuals 
scant justice to leave them to 
hazards of this sort. Paradoxical, 
though it sounds, it is an unideal 
hardy garden that does not pro¬ 
vide in the layout for one or more 
colonies of annuals. Without 
them there is, somehow, a sense 
of incompleteness in the garden. 
( 384 ) 
