onions or carrots in the vegetable garden, is to do away with the
informality and a certain gracious blending of form and colour that is
one of its greatest charms.

Thus it comes about, with the most successful of hardy mixed borders,
that, at the end of the third season, things will become a little
confused and the relations between certain border-brothers slightly
strained; the central flowers of the clumps of phloxes, etc., grow
small, because the newer growth of the outside circle saps their
vitality.

Personally, I believe in drastic measures and every third or fourth
year, in late September, or else April, according to season and other
contingencies, I have all the plants carefully removed from the beds and
ranged in rows of a kind upon the broad central walk. Then, after the
bed is thoroughly worked, manured, and graded, the plants are divided
and reset, the leavings often serving as a sort of horticultural wampum,
the medium of exchange among neighbours with gardens, or else going as a
freewill offering to found a garden for one of the "plotters" who needs
encouragement.

The limitations of the soil of my garden and surroundings serve as the
basis of an experience that, however, I have found carried out
practically in the same way in the larger gardens of the Bluffs and in
many other places that Evan and I have visited. So that any one thinking
that a hardy garden, at least of herbaceous plants, is a thing that,
once established, will, if not molested, go on forever, after the manner
of the fern banks of the woods or the wild flowers of marsh and meadow,
will be grievously disappointed.