colour. At the commercial florists, and in many of the large private
gardens, rows upon rows of flowers are grown on the vegetable-garden
plan, solely for gathering for the house, and while those with limited
labour and room cannot do this extensively, they can gain the same end
by an intelligent use of their seed beds.

Many men (and more especially many women), many minds, but however much
tastes may differ I think that a list of thirty species of herbaceous
perennials should be enough to satisfy the ambition of an amateur, at
least in the climate of the middle and eastern United States. I have
tried many more, and I could be satisfied with a few less. Of course by
buying the seeds in separate colours, as in the single case of pansies,
one may use the entire bed for a single species, but the calculation of
size is based upon either a ten-foot row of a mixture of one species, or
else that amount of ground subdivided among several colours.

Of the seeds for the hardy beds themselves, the enticing catalogues
offer a bewildering array. The maker of the new garden would try them
all, and thereby often brings on a bit of horticultural indigestion in
which gardener and garden suffer equally, and the resulting plants
frequently perish from pernicious anæmia. Of the number of plants
needed, each gardener must be the judge; also, in spite of many warnings
and directions, each one must finally work on the lines of personally
won experience. What is acceptable to the soil and protected by certain
shelter in my garden on one side of hill crest or road may not flourish
in a different soil and exposure only a mile away. One thing is very
certain, however,--it is time wasted to plant a hardy garden of
herbaceous plants in shallow soil.

In starting the hardy seed bed it is always safe to plant columbines,