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.