Is a permanent investment, possible only in the permanent home. It adds dignity and charm attainable from no other form of planting. It is to the outdoor life of the home what the possession of colonial furniture and family heirlooms is to the indoor life, and yet is neither expensive nor tedious in its inception. It may be acquired fully grown, as it were, by an order to the florist for ready grown plants of blossoming size, ready to give seasonal bloom, or it may be developed in a few months, inexpensively and most interestingly, by procuring the seeds of as many desirable varieties of hardy perennials as one has room or inclination for and planting them in the hotbed in early spring, and transplanting into permanent positions when large enough or, better still, by planting the seed in cold frames in274 August or early September and growing them on until cold weather when they should be protected for the winter and in the spring planted out where they are to bloom. Every hardy perennial set out in one's garden is an asset that will increase in value each succeeding year. Many have the root formation that admits of divisions—as the Shasta daisy, a single two year old clump usually dividing up into from six to ten blooming-size plants. English violets, English daisies, polyanthus, and many other plants may be divided annually until in time one owns large colonies of them, and this is a point well worth understanding,—that a large number of one kind of plant is much more effective and worth while than a large number of kinds of plants, of just one or a few individuals. Many plants which are inconspicuous or ineffective singly or in small groups, surprise one with their beauty when grown in large masses or long rows. The ulmaria—a variety of spir?a of deciduous growth—is a notable example of this. Planted singly it is merely a rather pretty flower; grown275 in a long row it is a mass of snowy white in late June and July that compels one with its beauty. Its congener, the spir?a fillipendula, a lesser but most graceful growth, also pleases one especially when grown in long rows in front of taller plants. And right here is a point well worth considering in planting a hardy border—the arranging of plants in rising tiers of bloom so that a bank of bloom may be produced. One effective bed that gladdened my heart for several seasons and rose in tier after tier of gracious bloom through several weeks of early summer had an initial planting next the front of tritomas, whose scarlet torches of flame did not come into bloom until late summer, but from then until frost made a brilliant band of color. Back of these was a fine planting of columbine, next a row of scarlet lychnis alternated with white feverfew, and still further back a full planting of the garden spir?a whose feathery heads of pinky-white flowers stood four or five feet high and in turn were topped with fine clumps of physostegias; the whole planting making a beautiful bank276 of bloom and one not commonly seen. This was a permanent planting requiring little care beyond the removal of all weeds and grass in the spring and an occasional thinning out of the plants when they became too crowded. The physostegia increases rapidly by root division and the lychnis, feverfew and aquilegias all self-sow so the bed practically never ran out or needed renewing and the cost, except for the tritomas, was that of a few packets of seeds—probably a total of fifty cents for some one hundred and fifty square feet of loveliness, and there are many, many combinations as happy and as easily acquired as that.

Lacking the convenience of hotbeds and cold frames, the vegetable garden is a most excellent place in which to start hardy perennials for a permanent garden. Flowers planted in rows among vegetables always seem to do better than anywhere else, the reason being that they are not crowded—usually being in single rows with a foot or more of open space at each side through which the hoe and cultivator can work freely, and277 where they will receive regular and constant attention throughout the growing season. In a garden of say fifty feet in width, several varieties of flowers may be grown in short lengths of ten feet or more. They should be covered somewhat more dee............