Of the Sweet Scented Geraniums, we have none equal to the hybrid, Mrs. Taylor, for beauty of foliage and of flower. It is a fine grower, and for green to mix with flowers it is admirable. Dr. Livingstone, a more recent novelty, is very handsome and fragrant. Rose and Lemon scented are delicious. Lady Plymouth is a variegated rose; leaves bronzy green, fringed with creamy white, sometimes assuming a pink tinge; very ornamental. London Blue is a very rare variety of scented geranium, of heavy creeping growth, with large crimped or curled leaves covered thickly with fine spines or hairs. Seldom blooms.
We have specified a goodly number, yet but a few from the many, and we can assure you that if you have a large bed of geraniums you will greatly admire them, and feel satisfied that you have the most effective bedding plants, requiring the least care, and for the smallest outlay, that you could possibly obtain. In California they grow without culture to an enormous size. From an editor's notes we cite the following:
"A little slip of geranium planted out in the spring, had grown in the summer to 150 branches, its stalk at its base four inches thick, and bearing over a thousand blooms! I saw a fence fifteen feet high, sixty-five feet long, covered with geranium vines that had clambered up one side, and then dropped down the other, filling both sides with a blanket of scarlet blossoms. It grows like weeds, and needs no care."
Geraniums are so hardy that one can leave them to the last in removing from the border in autumn. Frosts that kill Dahlia tops, and many other plants, do not harm geraniums. Some of mine, for lack of time to remove, are exposed till late without harm. The roots have great vitality, and when the stalk has frozen and rotted to the ground, a new growth will start forth, sometimes in a few weeks, and sometimes not for three months. I have had this proved by plants in my window boxes. So one need not be in a hurry to pull up the frozen geraniums. My large stocky plants I pack in dry goods boxes, filling in earth around the roots, and put them in the cellar where they have little light. The pot plants, also, are mostly put away so as to give all the available room to the cuttings rooted in the summer, and the rare and tender plants that will not live in a cellar. These cuttings make fine plants for bedding out in May or June.
In the spring the large geraniums are brought up to the open air and trimmed of their dead leaves, pruned of dead branches, and put in a large bed with the Hybrid Perpetual Roses.