132 
House & Garden 
A Touch of Retl in Winter 
—Green the Year Round 
G 
KEEN leaves decked with red ber¬ 
ries, in a lawn of snow—berries, 
hi iglit red berries that give warmth and 
cheer to the winds of winter, covering 
buffeted outer walls with a mantle of 
loveliness—that is 
Evergreen Bittersweet 
—a vine whose hardiness and irresistible 
charm have captured the hearts ol all lovers 
of growing things. 
No other vine is half so beautiful and none 
more hardy than Evergreen Bittersweet 
(Euonymus Vcgetus), whose gorgeous red 
berries and evergreen leaves climb to a noble 
height in the severest climates. It flourishes 
<D 
where English ivy can only be used for 
ground cover. When other vines are bare. 
Evergreen Bittersweet is bright. Planted in 
rows and sheared, it makes a picturesque 
hedge, solid and erect, green the whole year 
through. 
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$35 per 100. 
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It contains a great variety 
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ELLIOTT 
NURSERY CO. 
503 Magee Bldg. 
Pittsburgh, Pa. 
Getting Started With Perennials 
(Continued from page 80) 
only by insisting upon having named 
varieties of established merit. In this 
respect the voting scheme of the Peony 
Society, by which peonies are classi¬ 
fied, is proving a great help to the 
prospective buyer. All the better 
growers explain the system in their 
catalogues and give the ratings of such 
peonies as they list. 
HARDY PHLOX 
It is much the same with hardy 
phlox; one may far better purchase a few 
plants or even single specimens of the 
best large flowered sorts in the desired 
colors and build up a stock by divid¬ 
ing the plants as they grow larger, or 
grow new ones from cuttings of the 
roots or the young shoots. Cuttings 
made from the new sprouts in spring 
or the side shoots that start latei in 
the season grow readily under glass. 
Small divisions of the roots also grow 
readily, these latter are perhaps most 
conveniently made in the autumn. 
Planted then they will sprout and grow 
into flowering plants the following 
summer. In these ways a single phlox 
plant may be made to become a con¬ 
siderable colony in a single year. I 
have myself tried growing phlox from 
seed. If one will gather the seed when 
ripe and sow it just before the ground 
freezes in the fall, one will without 
doubt find the little plants starting in 
early spring, and these little plants will 
bloom the first year too. But they 
will prove a disappointment on the 
whole. In all the sowing of phlox seed 
that has ever taken place, I doubt if 
more than a hundred really first quality 
plants have resulted, and these are the 
better named varieties in the growers’ 
lists. Of all the washed out and un¬ 
interesting colors to be found in a 
stand of hardy phlox seedlings! The 
experimenting needs to be done if only 
for the chance of obtaining a new white 
that will be as large and beautiful as 
‘Frau Anton Buchner” and not have the 
same tendency to turn pink, but don't 
for Mercy’s sake set out to fill a bor¬ 
der with seedling phlox! 
The same thing is only less true of 
chrysanthemums. They grow readily 
enough from seed. One can have the 
pick of them, however, only by get¬ 
ting the named sorts and increasing 
the stock by slipping and division of 
the roots. 
BULBOUS PLANTS 
With lilies and all hardy plants that 
grow from bulbs the question of time 
as well as that of quality is to be con¬ 
sidered. No one ever, I suppose, ex¬ 
cept professional hybridizers, tries 
growing lilies, or tulips, or daffodils from 
seed. With these and the irises it is 
more satisfactory to obtain roots of 
the good named sorts in the first place. 
In the case of plants of which only 
a single specimen is desired, in my gar¬ 
den the helieniums and hardy sunflowers 
fall into this class, it is better probably 
to obtain a root than to take the 
trouble of growing a great many more 
plants than are needed from seed. 
There is of course a great amount of 
satisfaction in having named sorts of 
any flower one is particularly inter¬ 
ested in and if one takes to collecting 
it is quite necessary with many plants. 
For myself I do not care to own a 
peony unless I may know its name, 
but with the hardy asters it matters 
very little to me. As a matter of 
fact, I have purchased dozens of named 
asters; with the exception of a very 
few striking and beautiful forms, how¬ 
ever, I have entirely lost track of 
their names. 
And now we come to consider those 
perennials that are quite as well raised 
from seed. The hollyhock is one. If 
we are careful to procure seed of 
proven worth we may have the second 
season after sowing just as good holly¬ 
hocks as anybody. A decided advan¬ 
tage in growing hollyhocks from seed 
lies in the fact that the younger holly¬ 
hock plants are much less subject to 
attacks of the destructive rust that 
sometimes works such havoc with them. 
Curiously enough single hollyhocks 
seem more sturdy and healthy than 
the double ones. Hollyhock seed 
grows so readily that I never find it 
necessary to sow it with much care. 
I merely scatter it and rake it in 
lightly in a partially shaded and fairly 
moist spot about midsummer, and 
transplant the seedlings to their per¬ 
manent places in the fall or early 
spring. 
DELPHINIUMS 
Delphinium may be started in much 
the same way as the hollyhock. Here 
again the seed grown plants are likely 
to be more robust. Seedlings of del¬ 
phinium are likely to show much 
more variation than are those of the 
hollyhock. Consequently it is better 
to let delphinium seedlings flower the 
first time in the experimental grounds 
and then select those showing the best 
habit and the handsomest coloring for 
permanent planting. Once one has a 
particularly desirable plant of delphi¬ 
nium and wishes to increase the number 
of plants of the same sort it may be 
accomplished in either of two ways. 
In the fall or spring the plant may 
be lifted out of the ground and the 
stalks so separated that each will have 
a portion of the root growth. These 
divisions replanted and given care 
will develop into good plants in a few 
months. They will ordinarily bloom 
the following summer. Some sorts of 
delphinium, the beautiful pure white 
and the original Belladonna form no 
perfect seeds and must necessarily be 
propagated from divisions or cuttings. 
It is comparatively simple to grow 
delphinium plants from cuttings. I 
usually make my cuttings from the 
new shoots that start up after the 
first crop of bloom had been cut. The 
cuttings are rooted under glass. Some¬ 
times they are merely stuck into the 
ground and a glass fruit jar inverted 
over them, the jar being left in place 
until the following spring. All cuttings 
should of course be kept in partial 
shade to root. 
Some of the other perennials that 
are, I am satisfied, just as satisfactorily 
raised from seed are foxgloves, oriental 
poppies, pyrethrums, gaillardias, lupins, 
columbines, bellflowers, etc. I have 
experienced considerable difficulty in 
obtaining the double form of the 
pyrethrum in this way as only a very 
small percentage of the seed from 
double flowered plants of the pyre¬ 
thrum will come true. This, be it 
understood, is with the proviso that the 
very best seed obtainable is to be 
used. The question of seed supply is 
one that deserves a whole paragraph 
to itself, and even so I doubt if one 
can emphasize it enough. 
GETTING GOOD SEED 
There are too many irresponsible seed 
houses, irresponsible because they have 
nothing whatever to do with the all 
important things, selecting and grow¬ 
ing the plants from which the seed is 
to be saved. I do not mean to say 
or imply that I think our seed house 
(Continued on page 134) 
