it, early and late, only to find it one unbroken sheet of
bloom. How was it possible, we queried? Comes a day when the complex
secret of the apparent simple abundance was revealed. It was as the
foxgloves, that flanked a long alley, were decidedly waning when, quite
early one morning, we chanced to behold a small regiment of men remove
the plants, root and branch, and swiftly substitute for them immense
pot-grown plants of the tall flower snapdragon (_Antirrhinum_),
perfectly symmetrical in shape, with buds well open and showing colour.
These would continue in bloom quite through August and into September.
So rapidly was the change made that, in a couple of hours at most, all
traces were obliterated, and the casual passer-by would have been
unaware that the plants had not grown on the spot. This sort of thing is
a permissible luxury to those who can afford and desire an exhibition
garden, but it is not watching the garden growing and quivering and
responding to all its vicissitudes and escapes as does the humble owner.
Hardy gardening of this kind is both more difficult and costly, even if
more satisfactory, than filling a bed with a rotation of florists'
flowers, after the custom as seen in the parks and about club-houses: to
wit, first tulips, then pansies and daisies, next foliage plants or
geraniums, and finally, when frost threatens, potted plants of hardy
chrysanthemums are brought into play.

No, The Garden, You, and I know that hardy plants, native and
acclimated, may be had in bloom from hepatica time until ice crowns the
last button chrysanthemum and chance pansy, but to have every bed in
continuous bloom all the season is not for us, any more than it is to be
expected that every individual plant in a row should survive the frost
upheavals and thaws of winter.

If a garden is so small that half a dozen each of the ten or twelve
best-known species of hardy herbs will suffice, they may be bought of
one of the many reliable dealers who now offer such things; but if the
place is large and rambling, affording nooks for hardy plants of many
kinds and in large quantities, then a permanent seed bed is a positive
necessity.

This advice is especially for those who are now so rapidly taking up old
farmsteads, bringing light again to the eyes of the window-panes that
have looked out on the world of nature so long that they were growing
dim from human neglect. In these places, where land is reckoned by the
acre, not b