until the latter part of June, when alternating groups of field daisies and pink and red sweet williams are in full bloom at one end of the border, and summer-flowering cosmos holds sway at the other end, while the flax, bachelor’s buttons and daisies fill the center with blue and white.  By the middle of July the calendulas, coreopsis and annual larkspur make a vivid display where the narcissus was before.  These four make a very good combination, for if the bed is well made and the narcissus planted deep, the coreopsis and larkspur seed themselves, and with the exception of a deep raking in the late fall the bed needs no attention except thinning out for three years, and it is in bloom for at least four months of the season.

[Illustration:  Pink and white pinks, field and Shasta daisies, canterbury bells and hollyhocks.]

In this border I have at last found a place for the magenta phlox that usually fights with the whole garden.  I put it in front of a single row of pink and white cosmos, flank it on one side with pink and white verbenas, on the other with mixed scabiosas and in front of all a single row of Shasta daisies.  This combination pleases the family as well as the phlox.

On the south side of the garden, against a low buckthorn hedge is a narrower border of sky-blue belladonna, delphinium, buttercups and achillea, with an edging of Chinese pinks.  I had thought the complementary colors of the delphinium and buttercups would set each other off, but it is a very poor combination, for the foliage is so much alike that there is no contrast there, and when the plants are not in bloom it is almost impossible to tell which is which so as to take out the buttercups, whose yellow is too bright.  Shasta daisies set off the delphiniums to perfection with the wonderful purity of their white and yellow and pleasing contrast of form, foliage and height.  With Emperor narcissus bulbs set between the plants, there are flowers in the border the whole season.

Another very poor combination that is in my garden, much to my sorrow, is hemerocallis and siberica iris.  They started out about three feet from each other, but the hemerocallis spreads so quickly that now they form a mass that is almost impossible to break apart.  Another mistake I made was to put Shasta daisies and field daisies near together.  It is unfair to the smaller daisies, for although they are fully two inches in diameter, yet they appear dwarfed beside the giants.

There is one point in my garden that is vivid throughout the summer.  First comes the orange lilium elegans, then scarlet lychnis and later, tiger lilies.  Another bit is gorgeous from the first of August until frost; it is made up of blue and white campanula pyramidalis, that grow quite five feet high, and Mrs. Francis King gladioli.

An important thing to think of is the line of vision from each point of vantage of the house—­the endwise view of a multicolored bed of fairy columbines against a light green willow from the sewing room window, from the library the blue of a Juniata iris swaying four feet up in the air in front of a sweet briar, from the front porch pale yellow Flavescens iris through a mist of purple sweet rockets.