23

PLANT COMBINATIONS 30

WEEDING 34

LISTS OF DEPENDABLE PERENNIALS:

OF GENERAL EXCELLENCE 36

FOR SHADY POSITIONS 49

FOR DRY SOILS 50

FOR WET SOILS 51

ALPINES, OR ROCK PLANTS 51

THE ILLUSTRATIONS

A GARDEN OF PERENNIALS _Frontispiece_

Facing Page

A COLONY OF GERMAN IRIS 4

SWEET ROCKET AGAINST A FOLIAGE BACKGROUND 12

PEONIES 24

CANTERBURY BELLS AND FOXGLOVE 30

_ANEMONE JAPONICA_ 38

_PHLOX PANICULATA_ 46

SWAMP MALLOW, GAILLARDIA AND _CAMPANULA PERSICIFOLIA_ 50

MAKING A GARDEN OF PERENNIALS

INTRODUCTION

The successful garden has a permanent basis. There must be some flowers
that appear year after year, whose position is fixed and whose
appearance can be counted on. The group classed as perennials occupies
this position and about flowers of this class is arranged all the
various array of annuals and bulbs. These last act as reinforcements in
rounding out the garden scheme.

Perennials are plants that live on year after year if the conditions
surrounding them are congenial.

Trees and shrubs are perennials, of course; in these the stems are
woody, but we are considering only those known as herbaceous
perennials, having stems of a more or less soft texture that, with the
exception of a few evergreen species, die back each fall, new ones
appearing the following spring.

Quite a number of them are too tender to be generally grown as hardy
perennials, but those that bloom freely the first year--like the
snapdragon--are treated as annuals, discarding them when the season is
ended.

Some biennials--those that do not bloom until the second year, and then
die--may be placed among the perennials and considered of their class,
because they seed so freely at the base of the parent plant and bloom
the following year, that their presence in the border is nearly always
assured. The only thin