HOUSE AND GARDEN 
September, 1910 
If used for distant masses or for backgrounds in deep borders, Cannas 
—especially the greatly improved new sorts—do not deserve the 
stigma that has fallen upon them 
and the dwarf variety would have been better, or red Geraniums. 
And you will note one other surprising thing. Possibly all 
this has seemed to you too much of a socialistic garden scheme, 
where the individual plant was sacrificed for the effect of the 
whole. But you will find that your Begonias, and your Geran¬ 
iums, red or white or pink, or your dwarf Cannas, or even your 
Coleus, never were so beautiful in themselves as when you have 
a mass of them together. Thus you will get two uses from your 
garden, either of which is better than the old. 
Make a plan of your next year’s garden now from an obser¬ 
vation of this year’s mistakes, keeping the above suggestions in 
mind, and make out your list of bedding plants from the things 
you can now learn from observation. A great many of the annu¬ 
als described in “Making a Better Flower Garden,” in last April’s 
issue of House & Garden, can be sown out-of-doors to produce 
beautiful mass effects at a very small cost; some of them, such 
as Portulaca, Candytuft, Sweet Alyssutn, may be sown in July. 
Below follows a list of plants carried in the spring for bedding 
purposes by the ordinary retail florist. The table will be of as¬ 
sistance in enabling you to find out what you want, and for 
where. The reason this article is printed now instead of in the 
spring is that now you can see these flowers actually growing: 
Achyranthes: Used for heavy borders and mass foliage effect. 
Ageratum; Allysum: Great bloomers, for borders, or masses in 
front of taller flowers. 
Ampelopsis (Boston Ivy) : Climbing hardy vine, used for cov¬ 
ering walls and unsightly building sides. 
Asters: Used mostly for .cutting, but also produce mass effects 
of the most beauitful kind when planted in separate shades. 
(Continued on page 183) 
card these plants. Get your nose out of the “beds,” and move off 
far enough to get a little perspective; look at your garden from 
the veranda or some other frequented spot, and make it as a 
whole a picture from that point. Half shut your eyes, and use 
your imagination to develop the points of beauty, to paint out 
spots ugly or inharmonious, which such a visualizing will reveal. 
Create something! Every garden has hundreds of unguessed pos¬ 
sibilities. Discover the best in yours. And then you will perceive 
(when you have opened your eyes again) that your bare board 
fence does not belong in the Garden Beautiful at which you have 
just been looking; that a “high-light” is needed in the picture 
where a mass of shrubbery makes one corner of it too dark. So 
let the tall Cannas come out of the centre of the bed in the hodge¬ 
podge garden, where they stuck up like a sore thumb at a whist 
party, and hid everything beyond them, and go back where they 
will make the board fence a little less conspicuous; and put 
Salvias in that corner against the shrubbery, where in the au¬ 
tumn you will want the blaze of their glad color to defy the 
sober presence of flowerless branches, and heighten, by contrast, 
their somber beauty. And the little white-and-green-and-silver 
Geraniums (Mme. Salleroi) will fit in along the edge of a bed 
or walk, where it will be in place, blending some bit of color 
into the general scheme. Don’t be afraid to put them by them¬ 
selves! Try mass effects in place of muss effects. Your plants 
are the raw materials, the tubes of paint, with which your pic¬ 
ture is to be painted. You can mix them only once or twice a 
year. You say it will be slow work; well, most good work is 
slow. Do the best you can, and note the results. Then next 
year add a touch or two—perhaps it will take a few big Ricinus, 
with their dignified, shapely growth and rich foliage, besides the 
Cannas, to subdue that fence sufficiently. Tone down a bit, here 
and there. Perhaps that mass of Salvias was too prominent, 
The Tuberous Begonia is best planted in a border that is easily 
accessible, for its delicate beauty deserves close inspection 
