Making a Garden of Perennials   By: W. C. (William Constantine) Egan (1841-1930)

THE HOUSE & GARDEN "MAKING" BOOKS

It is the intention of the publishers to make this series of little volumes, of which Making a Garden of Perennials is one, a complete library of authoritative and well illustrated handbooks dealing with the activities of the home maker and amateur gardener. Text, pictures and diagrams will, in each respective book, aim to make perfectly clear the possibility of having, and the means of having, some of the more important features of a modern country or suburban home. Among the titles already issued or planned for early publication are the following: Making a Rose Garden; Making a Lawn; Making a Tennis Court; Making a Fireplace; Making Paths and Driveways; Making a Rock Garden; Making a Garden with Hotbed and Coldframe; Making Built in Bookcases, Shelves and Seats; Making a Garden to Bloom This Year; Making a Water Garden; Making a Poultry House; Making the Grounds Attractive with Shrubbery; Making a Naturalized Bulb Garden ; with others to be announced later.

[Illustration: To be really satisfying the flower garden must have that air of permanence that is given it by the perennials]

Making a Garden of Perennials

By W. C. EGAN

NEW YORK McBRIDE, NAST & COMPANY 1912

Copyright, 1912, by McBRIDE, NAST & CO.

Published June, 1912

CONTENTS

Page

INTRODUCTION 1

PREPARING THE BEDS 7

WINTER MULCHING 20

SUMMER MULCHING 23

PLANT COMBINATIONS 30

WEEDING 34

LISTS OF DEPENDABLE PERENNIALS:

OF GENERAL EXCELLENCE 36

FOR SHADY POSITIONS 49

FOR DRY SOILS 50

FOR WET SOILS 51

ALPINES, OR ROCK PLANTS 51

THE ILLUSTRATIONS

A GARDEN OF PERENNIALS Frontispiece

Facing Page

A COLONY OF GERMAN IRIS 4

SWEET ROCKET AGAINST A FOLIAGE BACKGROUND 12

PEONIES 24

CANTERBURY BELLS AND FOXGLOVE 30

ANEMONE JAPONICA 38

PHLOX PANICULATA 46

SWAMP MALLOW, GAILLARDIA AND CAMPANULA PERSICIFOLIA 50

MAKING A GARDEN OF PERENNIALS

INTRODUCTION

The successful garden has a permanent basis. There must be some flowers that appear year after year, whose position is fixed and whose appearance can be counted on. The group classed as perennials occupies this position and about flowers of this class is arranged all the various array of annuals and bulbs. These last act as reinforcements in rounding out the garden scheme.

Perennials are plants that live on year after year if the conditions surrounding them are congenial.

Trees and shrubs are perennials, of course; in these the stems are woody, but we are considering only those known as herbaceous perennials, having stems of a more or less soft texture that, with the exception of a few evergreen species, die back each fall, new ones appearing the following spring.

Quite a number of them are too tender to be generally grown as hardy perennials, but those that bloom freely the first year like the snapdragon are treated as annuals, discarding them when the season is ended.