68 
House & Garden 
Border pinks 
mixed with 
pyrethrum at 
the base of a 
wall make an 
excellent sum¬ 
mer edging 
THE FAMILY 
of PINKS 
Meeting the Dianthus 
RICHARDSON WRIGHT 
Although they lack fragrance the 
Chinese and Japanese pinks give 
abundantly in color and form. 
They are easily raised from seed 
E vE the Smiths, the Dianthus or 
Pink family is a large one. It has 
its direct descendants and its collater¬ 
al branches. No one, unless he be a 
botanist or a great authority on the 
subject or an unredeemable flower 
fiend would ever attempt to meet all 
the members of this family either in 
their native haunts or in local gar¬ 
den soil. For, beside being a nu¬ 
merous tril)e, this family is widely 
scattered and its members have 
adapted themselves ecpially well to 
the rigors of a glacier, to dry mea¬ 
dows, to chinks in rocks, and to in¬ 
nocuous and sheltered positions in 
"arden edges. Like the Smiths thev 
Withojit Sweet William, Dianthus barbatus, a gar¬ 
den is not complete. It makes its grand showing 
in mid-June in the locality of New York. For 
massed effects the single colors are better than 
the vari-colored pheasant eyed kind shown here 
Grass or Scotch pinks, Dianthus 
plumarius, are another favorite, 
giving a delicacy of bloom and 
color and a pungent fragrance 
are big and little, short lived and 
long, given to diseases, annoyed by 
pests, and possessed of certain idio¬ 
syncrasies as to soil, climate and 
moisture. 
At the present, si.x members of this 
family are thriving in my garden; in 
fact June is a big pink month with 
us. There are the masses of Sweet 
William (the collateral branch men¬ 
tioned above) in Newport pink and 
Sutton’s scarlet—both glowing colors 
worth all the other tints put together; 
Cheddar pinks or D. caesius, grown 
into huge mats of white and pale and 
deep pink from seed in one year, and 
{Continued on page 98) 
