48 
House 
& Garden 
GANNAS TO BRIGHTEN THE GARDEN 
'I'he Proper Uses of a Splendid Plant JPliich lias Not Been Generally Appreciated 
Because Its Possibilities If^ere Neglected 
j. HORACE McFarland 
Of a gay, rosy pink with 
creamy yellow bordered 
petals, Venus is one of the 
best of modern cannas. Its 
stalks grow to 4' under 
favorable cotiditions 
The old-fashioned formal 
beds of cannas are taboo, 
but there are other ways 
of arranging them. Here 
they are used with ever¬ 
greens and climbing roses 
C ANNAS?” you say with e}'e- 
brows slightly lifted. “Those 
raw red and yellow things, in great 
coarse beds? Not for my garden!" 
But wait; are you sure as to the 
raw color? And why have coarse 
beds? I don’t enjoy crude colors, 
and I detest the lawn anomalies 
that are called beds. Yet I greatly 
admire and like to use the modem 
cannas as brighteners of the gar¬ 
den, planting them in sunlit bor¬ 
ders where they will l.)e good to 
look at intimately, and will serve 
all through the summer and until 
frost to add piquancy to the color 
effect and richness to the foliage 
display. 
The modern canna is about as 
much like the natural form of the 
old Canna indica as a crisp Stay- 
man's Winesap is like the bitter 
little crab-apple which is said to 
have tempted Mother Eve. That 
"Indian Shot", as we boys knew 
it for its round black seeds, had a 
flower but little broader than a 
pencil, and about as long, which 
was red or yellow. Indeed, when 
I first came to know them, cannas 
were grown as foliage plants, to 
which the late and scantily pro¬ 
duced flowers were but incidental. 
The cannas of today, called 
For facing the 
bed of softer- 
hu e d cannas, 
screening their 
lower stalks, 
dwarf zinnias 
are excellent 
“orchid-flowered" or “lily-cannas”, 
are a mixture of breeds and species 
that no botanist will attempt to 
follow or separate. Their foliage 
is better than ever, but is now only 
the support of the flowers, which 
are broad and long, handsome, and 
produced most abundantly. Nor 
are the colors any longer crude in 
the better varieties. There are 
scarlets that are glowing but soft 
and pure; there are hues of crim¬ 
son that are anything but “noisy”; 
there are lovely shades of salmon 
and soft pink; there are yellows 
not offensive, and then there are 
the yellow and red combinations 
without which I can be entirelv 
contented, and which I do not need 
to buy. 
And now, too, there are the near¬ 
ly pure white cannas, altogether 
beautiful. The departure from 
clear white is toward cream or 
primrose, and there are usually 
faint pink dots on the broad petals, 
not in the least objectionable. Snow 
Queen is as white as most flowers 
and some snow not quite new, and 
it is a very satisfactory plant. 
These cannas bloom in an ir¬ 
regular terminal panicle or raceme, 
and the same cluster will open its 
{Continued on page 78) 
.Amo7ig the more brightly 
colored caiinas is Gladiator, 
a named variety with deep 
yellow blooms freely dotted 
with red, and reaching a 
height of about 4' 
Flag of Truce 
bears large, 
creamy white 
flowers with 
faint pink dots. 
It grows some 
4' tall 
