While it is not the intention to publish anything in this magazine that is misleading or unreliable, yet it must be remembered that the articles published herein recite the experience and opinions of their writers, and this fact must always be noted in estimating their practical value.

THE MINNESOTA HORTICULTURIST

Vol. 44 DECEMBER, 1916 No. 12

Perennial Garden at Carmarken, White Bear.

J. W. TAYLOR, ST. PAUL.

We have had so many inquiries about our garden as to how we make things grow, and as to the best plants to use, that we take pleasure in answering through the Horticulturist and giving the result of our experience in making an attractive perennial garden.  Our soil is sandy loam, very quick and warm, except in one place where it is low and there is a heavy black soil over clay.  It has been well enriched with well rotted manure and cultivated as much as possible every spring, where it could be done without disturbing plants and bulbs.  The arrangement of flowers as regards the blending and careful selection so that one bloom does not kill another is the secret of a beautiful garden.  Acres of flowers placed without any regard to color, no matter how expensive individual plants may be, is not pleasing to the eye.  It is like a crowd of mixed people, and we know crowds are never beautiful.  There is incompatibility among flowers as there is among people, and the compatible must be associated or there is no harmony.

What do we raise and how do we do it?  We will, in the space allowed, answer this as best we can.  It is not necessary to spend a great lot of money if one uses good judgment and knows where to buy.  Take that grand flower, the peony.  One can spend as much money as one pleases on these.  There is just now a fad regarding these flowers, and some rich people are paying as high as $30.00 a root for certain kinds, but it is not necessary.  The most really lovely gardens I have seen in the East and West have not been filled with plants bought at fancy prices.  We have some that originally cost us a good deal of money and which are now cheap, as for instance, the Henryii lily.  We bought the first we heard of at one dollar and one-half each.  Now they can be bought for thirty cents.  In peonies, Baroness Schroeder, an ivory white, is selling for three dollars a root, while the most beautiful of all the whites according to my taste, Festiva Maxima, can be bought for fifty cents.  The Kelways are all fine.  The best cost about one dollar each.  In our garden, among others, the Pallas, Edulis Superba, Golden Harvest, Madame Crousse and Queen Victoria, all fine, cost us fifty cents each.  We have a row all around our garden of these splendid flowers, many varieties, some very rare, and nothing could be more gorgeous in color or more effective than this border.  Hundreds of people came to see this peony show this year and were extravagant in their praise.