THE PEONY AT ITS BEST

Peonies are superb flowers, and no border can afford to be without them. The varieties are almost endless, but you cannot have too many of them. Use them everywhere. The chances are that you will wish you had room for more. They bloom early, are magnificent in color and form, and are so prolific that old plants often bear a hundred or more flowers each season, and their profusion of bloom increases with age, as the plant gains in size. Many varieties are as fragrant as a Rose, and all of them are as hardy as a plant can well be. What more need be said in their favor?

In order to attain the highest degree of success with the Peony, it should be given a rather heavy soil, and manure should be used with great liberality. In fact it is hardly possible to make the soil too rich to suit it. Disturb the roots as little as possible. The plant is very sensitive to any treatment that affects the root, and taking away a "toe" for a neighbor will often result in its failure to bloom next season. Keep the grass from crowding it. Year after year it will spread its branches farther and wider, and there will be more of them, and its flowers will be larger and finer each season, if the soil is kept rich. I know of old clumps that have a spread of six feet or more, sending up hundreds of stalks from matted roots that have not been disturbed for no one knows how long, on which blossoms can be counted by the hundreds every spring.

Dicentra, better known as "Bleeding Heart," because of its pendulous, heart-shaped flowers, is a most lovely early bloomer. It is an excellent plant for the front row of the border. It sends up a great number of flowering stalks, two and three feet in length, all curving gracefully outward from the crown of the plant. These bear beautiful foliage - indeed, the plant would be well worth growing for this alone - and each stalk is terminated with a raceme of pink and white blossoms. It is difficult to imagine anything lovelier or more graceful than this plant, when in full bloom.

The Aquilegia ought to be given a place in all collections. It comes in blue, white, yellow, and red. Some varieties are single, others double, and all beautiful. This is one of our early bloomers. It should be grown in clumps, near the front row.

A BIT OF THE BORDER OF PERENNIAL PLANTS

The Iris is to the garden what the Orchid is to the greenhouse. Its colors are of the richest - blue, purple, violet, yellow, white, and gray. It blooms in great profusion, for weeks during the early part of summer. It is a magnificent flower. It will be found most effective when grouped, but it can be scattered about the border in such a way as to produce charming results if one is careful to plant it among plants whose flowers harmonize with the different varieties in color. Color-harmony is as important in the hardy border as in any other part of the garden, and no plant should be put out until you are sure of the effect it will produce upon other plants in its immediate neighborhood. Find the proper place for it before you give it a permanent location. The term, "proper place," has as much reference to color as to size. A plant that introduces color-discord is as much out of place as is the plant whose size makes it a candidate for a position in the rear when it is given a place in the immediate foreground.

Pyrethrum uliginosum is a wonderfully free bloomer, growing to a height of three or four feet, therefore well adapted to the middle rows of the border. It blooms during the latter part of summer. It is often called the "Giant Daisy," and the name is very appropriate, as it is the common Daisy, to all intents and purposes, on a large scale.

The small white Daisy, of lower growth, is equally desirable for front-row locations. It is a most excellent plant, blooming early in the season, and throughout the greater part of summer, and well into autumn if the old flower-stalks are cut away in September, to encourage new growth. It is a stand-by for cut flowers for bouquet work. Because of its compact habit it is a very desirable plant for edging the border.

It is difficult to imagine anything more daintily charming than the herbaceous Spireas. Alba, white, and rosea, soft pink, produce large, feathery tufts of bloom on stalks six and seven feet tall. The flowers of these varieties are exceedingly graceful in an airy, cloud-like way, and never fail to attract the attention of those who pass ordinary plants by without seeing them.

The florists have taken our native Asters in hand, and we now have several varieties that make themselves perfectly at home in the border. Some of them grow to a height of eight feet. Others are low growers. The rosy-violet kinds and the pale lavender-blues are indescribably lovely. Nearly all of them bloom very late in the season. Their long branches will be a mass of flowers with fringy petals and a yellow centre. These plants have captured the charm of the Indian Summer and brought it into the garden, where they keep it prisoner during the last days of the season. By all means give them a place in your collection. And it will add to the effect if you plant alongside them a few clumps of their sturdy, faithful old companion of the roadside and pasture, the Golden Rod.

It hardly seems necessary for me to give a detailed description of all the plants deserving a place in the border. The list would be too long if I were to attempt to do so. You will find all the really desirable kinds quite fully described in the catalogues of the leading dealers in plants. Information as to color, size, and time of flowering is given there, and you can select to suit your taste, feeling confident that you will be well satisfied with the result.

Just a few words of advice, in conclusion:

Don't crowd your plants.

Allow for development.

Don't try to have a little of everything.

Don't overlook the old-fashioned kinds simply because they happen to be old. That proves that they have merit.

Keep the ground between them clean and open.

Manure well each spring.

Stir the soil occasionally during the season.

Prevent the formation of seed.

Once in three or four years divide the old clumps, and discard all but the strongest, healthiest portions of the roots. Reset in rich, mellow soil. Do this while the plants are at a standstill, early in spring, or in fall, after the work of the season is over.