80 
House & Garden 
GETTING STARTED WITH PERENNIALS 
Since Perennials Form the Backbone of the Border , 
the Beginner Can Well Consider Them First 
JOHN L. REA 
F OR numerous and per¬ 
fectly good reasons 
hardy perennials have 
largely taken the place in 
many a flower bed and border 
of the gay annuals we so 
long loved and labored with. 
It took a long time to make 
some of us quite appreciate 
the advantages of making 
the change. Those of us who 
did, and had the courage and 
the price of our convictions, 
set resolutely about it and 
began all over again. Others, 
a trifle sentimental perhaps, 
to which section of society I 
must in all truth admit be¬ 
longing, clung and still cling 
more or less surreptitiously 
to certain of the old favor¬ 
ites and, knowing all the time 
that it is a losing battle, yet 
persist in seeking out even 
in the shadow of their more 
enduring neighbors the ever 
more and more circumscribed 
odd corners where we may 
have our nasturtiums and 
marigolds, our bachelor but¬ 
tons and zinnias. It is dif¬ 
ferent with the poppies. I 
just scatter them hit and miss 
all down the double border. 
But for all that, it would 
be a conservative estimate to 
suppose that there are in 
my garden to-day fifty per¬ 
ennials for every annual to 
be found there. 
This change has come 
about not without difficulty, 
and that not altogether one 
arising from the passion with 
which I instinctively cling 
to the old. Whoever has brought a 
slender purse and a copy of the 
modern hardy plant specialist’s cata¬ 
logue to the writing desk together 
understands as well as I how ap¬ 
parently hopeless a case it is. And 
what with the restrictions upon plant 
importation and the consequent in¬ 
creased cost of renewing stocks, the 
problem seems one of ever increasing 
difficulties, for in the newer issues of 
the catalogues plants that formerly one 
could purchase for twenty or twenty- 
five cents are now listed at thirty and 
thirty-five or even forty cents. It is, 
however, a difficulty which patience, 
a certain amount of capital, and a 
Early planting 
of perennials 
can be made 
in pots or flats 
in March in- 
do or s . Sow 
the seed thinly 
Transplant seedlings when 
the first true leaf appears 
A glass placed over the 
pot will help germination 
The seedlings may be placed into sep¬ 
arate containers, which makes an 
easy way of handlmg them when 
they are transplanted into the garden 
measure of time and perseverance will 
finally overcome. 
I have in my own case largely suc¬ 
ceeded in finding a solution for the 
problem. My money outlay has not 
been great and seems almost negligible 
now, extended as it was over a number 
of years. Yet to-day my garden is not 
only extensive but well stocked. In 
building up my collection of plants I 
have learned many things. For in¬ 
stance I have learned that I could only 
become the proud possessor of even a 
one eyed rootlet of “Kelway’s Glorious”, 
one of the three or four handsomest 
peonies in existence, by sending a check 
for ten dollars for it, and I have likewise 
learned that for the outlay of two shil¬ 
lings and sixpence and a 
little watching and waiting 
I may have a patch of long 
spurred columbine seedlings 
in a series of lovely colors to 
quite take your breath away. 
The commonly grown peren¬ 
nials, as this would indicate, 
fall into two grea't classes in 
this regard. There are, on the 
one hand, a few that it is 
useless trying to grow from 
seed and, on the other, a 
large number that are just 
as well and perhaps even 
better obtained in that way 
The peony most decidedly 
belongs to the former of the 
two classes. They may be and are grown 
from seed, for only in thac way are new 
varieties to be produced. But it would be 
quite impractical to start out to furnish 
a border with its peonies in that way. And 
it is not entirely that it would take too long 
either, but that the results would be so un¬ 
satisfactory. The blooms in a group of 
seedlings would most likely average far 
below those of the cheaper named sorts 
that may be had for less than a dollar a 
root. The trouble is that the seedlings are 
prone to run to uninteresting and more or 
less inferior singles and small flowered 
types. There are doubtless thousands of 
peony seedlings, take the world over, com¬ 
ing into first bloom each year, but the good 
new sorts introduced annually could be 
numbered on the fingers of one hand. With 
peonies, then, one must obtain a root of 
each of the sorts desired, which root may. 
after a year or two, be divided if one pre¬ 
fers increase in the number of plants to 
quality and quantity of bloom. With 
peonies nowadays one gets started right 
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