96 
House & Garden 
It’s the Little Touches of Convenience 
that Make a Home 
13 
OMPLETE electrical convenience is just a 
matter of forethought. Above all things, 
you want the house you live in to be home¬ 
like—comfortable and convenient. 
What can contribute more to your comfort and 
convenience than electricity properly applied? 
Have switches in every room. Be able to 
control the upstairs lights from downstairs and 
vice versa; to light the garage or cellar from 
the kitchen. 
With plenty of well located convenience out¬ 
lets you can place attractive lamps wherever 
you wish. You can use several electrical devices all at the 
same time, if need be; a vacuum cleaner in any part of the 
house, a sewing machine where the sunlight is brightest, a 
chafing dish in your living room or den for those “clubby” 
little spreads. 
These economical home comforts may be had in the 
house you are living in just as well as in a new one, for any 
qualified electrical contractor will do the work with little 
muss or trouble—and it costs very little more to have com¬ 
plete electrical convenience. 
The G-E Tum¬ 
bler Switch 
works with a 
touch of the 
elbow or a flip 
of the finger. 
A New Booklet for Home Lovers 
What is Your Address? 
How to secure this electrical conveni¬ 
ence in each room of your house is told 
in detail in a booklet prepared for you 
by household specialists of the General 
Electric Company. 
This booklet will be sent you free, to¬ 
gether with the name of a nearby elec¬ 
trical contractor qualified to assist you in 
planning adequate electrical convenience 
for your home. 
If you own or rent a home, or ever 
expect to, you will find this booklet 
well worth reading. 
Herbaceous Perennials 
(Continued from page 94) 
the place of shrubs along the walls and 
driveways. The most common and 
satisfactory method of planting them is 
in mass in a border. Here they should 
be arranged according to their size, 
color of the flowers, time of blooming 
and habit of growth. A carefully 
thought-out planting plan should be 
made in which the location and rela¬ 
tive arrangement of each variety should 
be indicated. The plants should be set 
in the border according to height, with 
the taller ones at the back and the 
lower ones toward the front. How¬ 
ever, the grading should not be too 
pronounced, as an uneven line is much 
more pleasing. Planting in groups of 
ten or a dozen of one kind is also more 
effective than scattering the plants in 
groups of two or three. The plants 
should also be carefully arranged so 
that all the early sorts will not be at 
one end of the border, leaving this end 
unattractive later in the season. One 
should aim to have flowers at all times 
all along the border. 
In arranging the plants for color, as 
with annuals, it is best to choose only 
two or three colors which harmonize. 
Harmony of color is obtained in two 
general ways,—by blending or contrast. 
In the blending arrangement, tints and 
shades of the same primary color may 
be placed next to each other, arranged 
according to successive intensities of 
that color. For example, using the red 
primary we would place light pink, 
pink, deep pink, light red and red to¬ 
gether, and expect the effect to be 
pleasing. Likewise with the two other 
primary colors, yellow and blue, suc¬ 
cessive intensities of them could be 
placed side by side without producing 
bad effects. Many of the most success¬ 
ful flower gardens today are laid out 
using only one color, or at most, two, 
viz., pink or blue. White flowers may 
always be used because white is really 
absence of color and does not interfere 
with other colors. Too much of white, 
however, may give an appearance of 
“spottiness.” 
In arranging colors by contrast, two 
colors are chosen which are unlike in 
composition and therefore contrast. 
The following table of colors and their 
contrasts will act as a guide in this 
method of arrangement: 
Red 
Orange 
Yellow 
Green 
Blue 
Violet 
The green of the foliage aids materi¬ 
ally in maintaining a proper balanced 
harmony. 
The following three color combina¬ 
tions are satisfactory: 
Red 
Yellow 
Blue 
Orange 
Green 
Purple 
Blue 
Yellow 
Red 
It is a common mistake to plant too 
thickly, so that the roots are not given 
enough room to spread out. In general, 
the plants should be spaced a distance 
equal to one-half their height, varying 
this in the case of plants that are very 
bushy to a distance equal to their 
height, and in the case of plants that 
are tall and slender, to about one- 
fourth their height. 
With the exception of peonies, Yucca, 
bleeding heart and a few others, peren¬ 
nials should be dug up, divided into 
several pieces according to their size, 
every three to five years. This is done 
because the crowns which produce the 
best flowers, flower only a few seasons 
and die. However, most of the plants 
spread out and new crowns are pro¬ 
duced around the center of dead ones. 
These should be dug up and reset. The 
best time to do this is immediately 
after flowering in most cases. At this 
time it is also best to set out new plants. 
By lifting the plants as suggested, it 
also affords an opportunity to fertilize 
the soil in the border, which after 
several seasons of growth will have be¬ 
come depleted. Early spring and early 
fall or late summer are good times to 
plant out new borders. 
For Shady Positions 
Aconitum —Monkshood 
Actcea spicata —Barberry 
Anemone Pennsylvania —Wind flower 
Convallaria —Lily-of-the-valley 
Dielytra —Bleeding heart 
Hardy ferns 
Funkia —Plantain lily 
Hepaticas —Liver leaf 
Mertensia virginica —Blue bell 
Thalictrum —Meadow rue 
T rillium —Wake-robin. 
For Dry Soils 
Asclepias tuberosa —Butterfly weed 
Aquilegia canadensis —Canadian colum¬ 
bine 
Aquilegia alpina —Alpine columbine 
Gypsophila —Baby’s breath 
Gaillardia —Blanket flower 
Helianthus multiflorus —Mexican sun¬ 
flower 
Inula grandiflora —Fleabane 
Saxifraga crossifolia —Saxifrage 
Sedums —Stonecrop 
For Wet Soils 
Hibiscus moscheutos —Swamp mallow 
Iris pseudacorus 
Iris sibirica —Sibirian iris 
Iris laevigata —Japanese iris 
Lobelia cardinalis —Cardinal flower 
Monarda —Oswego tea 
Polygonium cuspidatum —Giant knot 
weed 
Spiraea 
For Stony Soils 
Achillea tomentosa —Woolly yarrow 
Arabis albida —Rock cress 
Campanula carpatica —Carpathian hare¬ 
bell 
Geum coccineum 
Gypsophila repens —Baby’s breath 
Phlox amoena —Creeping phlox 
Sedum in variety—Stone crop 
Tunica saxifraga 
Yucca filamentosa —Adam’s needle 
NOTE—The above article, written 
for the Massachusetts Agricultural 
College Extension Service News, by 
Professor Richard T. Muller, Depart¬ 
ment of Floriculture, shows the home 
owner how to make permanent gardens 
of beauty and taste, that last from 
year to year and require a minimum of 
care and attention. 
