76 
House & Garden 
Thel^ew BritatnTractor 
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NEW BRITAIN, CONN. 
Building the Hardy Border 
{Continued from page 74) 
greatly hinder the proper cultivation of 
tiie larger plants. 
The earliest flowering plant I have 
indicated is the lupin. Now the lupin 
(Polyphyllus, the perennial variety), 
comes in white, pink and blue. The 
white is a flower of exquisite purity 
and grace. The blue, however, runs to 
reddish tones and the usual pink lupin 
rather suggests lavender. There is a 
recently introduced lupin of a purer 
pink that in combination with the white 
forms a beautiful group. The lupin is 
a fair sized plant throwing up perhaps 
a dozen flower stalks, from 2' to 3' tall. 
In this border, SO' long by 8' wide, I 
have placed ten lupins, three pink and 
seven white. Nothing else will be in 
bloom when they open. The whole 
border will be a mass of billowy green, 
however, and if the background can be 
a hedge or a vine-clad fence, the lupins 
will prove quite enough. 
By the time these begin to fade, the 
irises wilt be coming into flower. In the 
iris planting I have limited the colors 
to white, blue and pink. The iris is so 
delicately colored that only the so-called 
self-colored sorts seem sufficiently as¬ 
sertive to be suitable for a planting of 
this nature. Mrs. H. Darwin is a most 
satisfactory white, of rather dwarf 
habit. Madame Chereau is the tall and 
stately variety with somewhat elongated 
white flowers with blue laced edges. 
Pallida Dalmatica is a large, luxuriantly 
I growing kind, whose extra sized flowers 
at a little distance give the effect of a 
clear, delicate blue. Her Majesty, with 
flowers almost as large but borne on 
shorter stems, is soft pink with crimson 
markings. These four are as satisfac¬ 
tory as any I know for this use. Not 
only that, but they are particularly 
beautiful irises in their own right. 
Faded iris blooms with their undevel¬ 
oped seed pods should be broken off 
each day. Left on, they go far to spoil 
the appearance of the plant and, be¬ 
sides, new buds always open better if 
the withered flowers are removed. 
We have to be especially careful in 
placing our irises unless we are willing 
to cut them off before their time, be¬ 
cause the oriental poppies never wait 
for the iris season to be quite over. 
These with their brilliant black and 
scarlet coloring and great size are likely 
to prove rather upsetting to one’s pre¬ 
conceived ideas of balance and harmony, 
unless they are carefully curbed. After 
considerable experimenting I have finally 
found them most effective in my own 
border grouped by themselves, where 
they have a background of evergreens. 
It will be noticed that in the plan I 
have placed them and the irises together, 
or rather I have used the white iris to 
separate them from the colored sorts. 
Throughout I have used white as a har- 
monizer, where it serves much the same 
purpose as the lead of a stained glass 
window, keeping apart colors that would 
clash if in immediate contact. 
The Peonies 
By the first of June—in many locali¬ 
ties, somewhat earlier—the peony plants 
will have altogether lost the mahogany 
color of their earliest stage and will 
have developed into picturesque mounds 
of deep, glossy green. The buds of the 
sorts to flower first will be almost at 
the point of pushing back their green 
calyxes and unrolling their petals. For 
a day or two before this long- 
watched-for event takes place I like to 
have an all-green border again and 
usually make a point of cutting out the 
iris stalks and poppies still in flower. 
The peonies are a host in themselves 
and seem to prefer a clear stage when 
their show starts. 
In the key accompanying the plan 
will be found the names of twelve 
peonies which I unreservedly recom¬ 
mend, twelve standard sorts of moderate 
price, which give as great a variety in 
type and color of bloom as any twelve 
I think of, and which will furnish' 
flowers for the longest possible season— i 
from three to four weeks. Hot weather! 
at this time noticeably shortens the sea-1 
son, both as regards the group and the 
individual plants. 
By the third week of June, when the! 
later peonies are in flower, the del¬ 
phiniums will be reaching a considerable i 
height, and the long, graceful spires ofi 
buds will begin to show color. These 
with the Madonna lilies and the early! 
white phloxes always follow hard on 
the peonies. The delphinium, or peren¬ 
nial larkspur, ranges in color from white! 
through countless enchanting combina¬ 
tions of blue and lavender to deep blue 
and purple. The scarlet and so-called' 
yellow sorts need not be considered here. 
This lily, phlox and larkspur time I 
shows the border possibly at the height 1 
of its beauty from the point of view ofi 
the picture builder. The larkspurs! 
sometimes attain an extreme height ofi 
8', well established plants throwing up 
numerous stalks. The lilies in a favor- 1 
able season grow 3' to 4' tall. The! 
phloxes are lower. The colors and the' 
varied heights lend themselves admir-l 
ably to effective group arrangements. 
I advise trying the lilies if they can 
have rather light and well-drained soil. 
They are as hopeless in a heavy, wet 
soil as a family of young turkeys in a ‘ 
rain squall. 
The Phlox Era 
As the larkspur and lily time passes, 
the gorgeous phlox era comes—the for¬ 
mer perhaps the most ethereal, the 
latter certainly the most brilliant phase 
of the garden year. Of these taller, later 
phloxes I have indicated some half- 
dozen of what seem to me the hand¬ 
somest and most distinctive sorts. The 
newer, large flowered varieties are the 
ones worth while. The beautiful, big, 
creamy white flowered dwarf. Tapis 
Blanc, is, so far as I know, without a 
rival for the post it seems especially 
designed to fill; that is, a place in the 
very front of the border. It grows 
from 1 to V/ 2 ' tall and bears large 
heads of large flowers. It blooms earlier 
than the other phloxes in this later 
group, usually beginning to flower just 
as the early white, Miss Lingard, is by 
its best. Tapis Blanc forms a bridge 
between the two seasons. Frau Anton 
Buchner, universally acknowledged the 
very best white phlox, bears equally 
large flowers in larger but somewhat 
looser heads, and grows very tall, often 
over 3'. This white is used for its own 
sake and to separate the more brilliant 
sorts. These brilliant colors are most 
effective used in considerable quantities, 
each by itself. Of the colored varieties, 
I suggest starting with a half-dozen 
each of the following: 
Cortez—a rich crimson, early. 
G. A. Strohlein—a wonderful salmon 
with a red eye. 
Europa—white with a clear red eye. 
Comte Von Hochberg—a deep crim¬ 
son, one of the darkest colored 
sorts. 
Inspector Elpel—a rosy pink with a 
red eye, especially valuable, being 
very late. 
The phloxes, with their wealth of 
color and bloom, carry us well into 
September, when the various fall asters 
begin to flower. 
Asters 
The number of these Michaelmas 
daisies, as we have learned to call them, 
are a revelation to most people, who 
still suppose the lavenders of our own 
New England asters the only colors to 
be found among them. There are, how¬ 
ever, not only these lavenders and many 
more, but pinks, in almost pure tones, 
{Continued on page 78) 
