ellar excavation, mixed with
bricks and mortar--few flowers root well in brick.

Place your flower beds along the walks, at the house, or along the lot
lines, but do not clutter the center of your lawn with them. An open
grass plot adds apparent size and dignity to any place. Give as much
open sunlight as possible. Only early spring bloomers, like the
hepaticas and trilliums, grow in what we call shade--though at the time
of their growth and bloom they have the sunlight through the leafless
tree branches. Do not make a bed where the drainage is bad or where
water will stand in it during the winter. Tile draining will improve
the bed under almost any circumstances.

Keep away from large trees. A vigorous elm, and a perennial cannot eat
and drink out of the same dish and both grow fat. The perennial will be
the one to suffer, mostly from lack of moisture. If you have planted
near a tree or lack of space compels you to do so, take a sharp spade
and, each spring, cut deeply all along the edge of the flower bed
nearest the tree, and pull out from the bed all the small roots you can
without disturbing the plants. This will help it for a time, but the
elm will invade the bed again and the operation must be repeated. This
applies to beds within eight or ten feet of a tree. For any bed much
nearer, the cutting would be apt to injure the tree, and the growth in
the bed would be a poor one.

Where the grounds are large and there is ample room for large beds at
the borders, with an open lawn in front, flowering shrubs may be used
as a background for perennials, but the growth of the shrubs requires
frequent removals of the perennials further forward, and a frequent
renewal of the plant food which the shrub is sharing. This method
requires more watering on account of the double duty required of the
soil.

Avoid fancy or geometrical shapes. They belong, when allowable, to
formal gardens where tender bedding plants are used. Along walks,
rectangular beds may be made, but against buildings or boundary lines,
while the rear line may be comparatively straight, the front should be
undulating, having long sweeping bays and promontories. No short curves
should exist. They interfere with the lawn-mower. When it is desirable
to face a boundary border with a walk, then, of course, the front line
of a bed should be straight.

[Illustration: A background of vines or flowering shrubs is worth
striving for, especially to set off white flower