The delphinium sports into various forms of flower, color and shape—the tones of color being a mingling of blues, pinks and mauve, some in the most lovely combinations imaginable. They will all bloom the first year from seed if sown in February or March in a greenhouse or hot-bed, but will not all bloom at once, so that for at least a period of one month, new blooms are opening each day. One's main pleasure is in expectancy. You are always looking and hoping for something better, and you generally get it. It is best, when a plant does not produce a flower up to grade, to dig it up and discard it, but those that are good should be marked in some manner to identify them. A label placed at their side will do, but the better way is to get some small sheet-lead tags, bearing stamped-in numbers or letters. Attach to wire pegs ten inches long and force down near the plant, recording its number in your "Garden Book" with a description of the flower. This enables you at any planting time—spring is the best for delphiniums—to plant in groups of light blues, dark blues, etc. You may be undecided sometimes as to whether you consider a plant good enough to keep or not. In this case keep it, but mark it a "hold-over." Some plants do better the second season. They may be sown outdoors in May, but will hardly bloom the same year.
PLANT COMBINATIONS
Many combinations may be used whereby a certain area may be made to produce a double crop of bloom, and thus prolong the flowering season within that area. Peonies, which are planted two and a half to three feet apart, may have the Lilium superbum, the later varieties of gladiolus, or Hyacinth candicans planted in between them; the last two should be taken up each fall as they are not hardy in all sections. The lilies will require resetting every few years, as they travel around in their new growth, and may invade the peony roots. These will flower above the peony foliage. Fall is the best time to plant any lily.
The shooting star (Dodecatheon media) may be planted between the spreading dwarf plants of that admirable bell flower (Campanula Carpatica). The bell flowers may be planted eighteen inches apart and, in the spring, when the shooting stars are up and in bloom, the foliage of the campanula is hardly in evidence, but during the summer it occupies all the space between them.
There are interesting combinations of flowers not only for succession of bloom but for simultaneous bloom, as Canterbury bells (Campanula medium) and foxglove (Digitalis)
After flowering, all that part of the shooting star above ground turns brown, dies back and disappears to return again next spring.
The Virginia bluebell (Mertensia Virginica) is another charming plant of the same habit, and as it is worthy of cultivation in groups, it often becomes a question where to place it so that the bare ground it leaves behind is not an eye-sore. Besides colonies I have established in my ravine, where the overhanging underbrush hides its absence later on, I grow it under large bushes of forsythia. Both bloom at the same time and the pink buds and open blue bells of the Mertensia, when seen through the fleecy mass of the golden bells of the forsythia, make a charming picture. After flowering, the forsythia hides the disrobing Mertensia with its heavy sheet of foliage.
Some perennials—the bleeding heart and the perennial poppy—have ragged foliage after blooming and require some tall bushy plant to be placed in front and around them to hide their shabbiness. Strong-growing perennials, asters or the biennial Rudbeckia triloba, are good for this purpose.