re 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 anaemia. 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,
Canterbury bells, coreopsis, larkspur, pinks in variety, foxgloves,
hollyhocks, gaillardia, the cheerful evergreen candy-tuft, bee balm and
its cousin wild bergamot, forget-me-nots, evening primroses, and the
day-flowering sundrops, Iceland and Oriental poppies, hybrid phlox, the
primrose and cowslips of both English fields and gardens, that are quite
hardy here (at least in the coastwise New England and Middle states),
double feverfew, lupins, honesty, with its profusion of lilac and white
bloom and seed vessels that glisten like mother-of-pearl, the tall
snapdragons, decorative alike in garden or house, fraxinella or gas
plant, with its spikes of odd white flowers, and pansies, always
pansies, for the open in spring and autumn, in rich, shady nooks all
summer, and even at midwinter a few tufts left in a sunny spot, at the
bottom of a wall by the snowdrops, will surprise you with round,
cheerful faces with the snow coverlet tucked quite under their chins.

[Illustration: FRAXINELLA,--GERMAN IRIS AND CANDY-TUFT.]

It is well to keep a tabulated list of these old-time perennials in the
_Garden Boke_, so that in the feverish haste and excitement of the
planting season a mere glance will be a reminder of height, colour, and
time of bloom. I lend you mine, not as containing anything new or
original, but simply as a suggestion, a hint of what one garden has
found good and writ on its ho