not done, smaller flowers with poorer colours will be the result.

The foxglove, one of the easily raised and very hardy plants, of
majestic mien and great landscape value, will go on growing in one
location for many years; but if you watch closely, you will find that it
is rarely the original plant that has survived, but a seedling from it
that has sprung up unobserved under the sheltering leaves of its parent.
The old plant grows thick at the juncture of root stock and leaf, the
action of the frost furrows and splits it, water or slugs gain an
entrance, and it disappears, the younger growth taking its place.
Especially true is this also of hollyhocks. The larkspurs have different
roots and more underground vigour, and all tap-rooted herbs hold their
own well, the difficulty being to curb their spreading and undermining
their border companions.

[Illustration: ENGLISH LARKSPUR SEVEN FEET HIGH.]

It is conditions like these that keep the gardener of hardy things ever
on the alert. Beds for annuals or florists' plants are thoroughly dug
and graded each spring, so that the weeds that must be combated are
of new and comparatively shallow growth. The hardy bed, on the contrary,
in certain places must be stirred with a fork only and that with the
greatest care, for, if well-planned, plants of low growth will carpet
the ground between tall standing things, so that in many spots the
fingers, with a small weeding hoe only, are admissible. Thus a blade of
grass here, some chickweed there, the seed ball of a composite dropping
in its aerial flight, and lo! presently weedlings and seedlings are
wrestling together, and you hesitate to deal roughly with one for fear
of injuring the constitution of the other. To go to the other extreme
and keep the hardy garden or border as spick and span clean as a row of