52 
House & Garden 
BUILDING THE 
HARDY BORDER 
General Principles and Specific 
Details — Succession oj Bloom 
and Parieiies for Special Effects 
JOHN 1.. REA 
N O scheme ol garden ljuilding is at once 
so effective and so easily maintained 
as a hardy border. It is a source of never- 
ending wonderment to me that so few home¬ 
builders seem to realize fully the possi¬ 
bilities of such a feature and its very great 
.-superiority to the use of the so-called an¬ 
nual bedding plants. 
Advantages of Perennials 
As one of these points of superiority, let 
us consider first the item of cost. The 
florist coming each spring to fill your Ireds 
with his red geraniums, scarlet sage, can- 
nas, elephant’s ears, castor oil beans and a 
thousand and one parti-colored annuals 
charges a pretty penny for his labors. Pos¬ 
sibly you grow your own plants, but at all 
events, there is the annual e.xpenditure of 
money or time and labor in procuring the 
season’s supply. 
d'he perennial plants, on the other hand, 
need very seldom to be renewed. In fact, 
it becomes sooner necessary to find an out¬ 
let for the overflow than to set in new plants, 
fl'his overflow, if one has started out with 
choice named varieties, has, indeed, a com¬ 
mercial value. A fuller satisfaction, how¬ 
ever, is discovered when one finds that there 
are enough plants to give away. For isn’t 
at least half the joy of possession the pleas¬ 
The beautijul, creamy, white - flowered 
dwarf phlox Tapis Blanc is without a rival 
for its place in the very front of the border. 
The slender iris blades set it off perfectly 
The peonies are a host in themselves and 
seem to prefer a clear stage when their 
show starts in early June. In the left fore¬ 
ground the delphiniums are developing fast 
ure of sharing your abundance with another ? 
The annuals usually set are wTat we call 
tender annuals, which means that they will 
not survive any degree of frost. Their sea¬ 
son then is of the briefest. In consequence, 
for a considerable time each year the beds 
devoted to them are no better than so many 
Ijare patches in the law-n. In the herbaceous 
planting, however, there is scarcel}^ a dull 
moment, for growth starts wdth the earliest 
hint of warm weather and continues almost 
until snow flies again. During the first 
few w’eeks there is the interest of the rapidly 
developing plants. From the time when the 
earliest flowers come, in April or May, there 
is a succession of bloom until late fall. 
Variety and Permanence 
Someone will object here that this perma¬ 
nent ])lanting allow's no variation from year 
to } ear. 'To such I would answer that in a 
single season a hardy garden will furnish 
as maii)^ complete changes as the annual 
bedders can give in several years, unless 
indeed you run your garden after the 
Chinese plan of setting the whole thing 
over again several times during a single 
season. As usually employed, the annuals 
give one and the same color scheme during 
their whole summer, while a well planned 
hard}' border will furnish at least six en¬ 
tire changes. In the border, too, there is a 
greater variety in growth, which makes jx)S- 
sible differences in mass effects. 
Expecting to tire of the same plants 
A-ear after year, w'e unexpectedly come 
(Continued on page 74) 
Inspector Elpel is a late flowering 
phlox, a rosy pink with red eye. Its 
blooming period carries well into Sep¬ 
tember, when the fall asters begin to 
come into flower 
