"They've been improved, too, and now they are large and very handsome and of various heights. If you have room enough you can have a lovely bed of tall ones at the back, with the half dwarf kind before it and the dwarf in front of all. It gives a sloping ma.s.s of bloom that is lovely, and if you nip off the top blossoms when the buds appear you can make them branch sidewise and become thick."

"We certainly haven't s.p.a.ce for that bank arrangement in our garden,"

decided Roger, "but it will be worth trying in Dorothy's new garden,"

and he put down a "D" beside the note he had made.

"The snapdragon sows itself so you're likely to have it return of its own accord another year, so you must be sure to place it just where you'd like to have it always," warned Mr. Emerson.

"The petunia sows itself, too," Margaret contributed to the general stock of knowledge. "You can get pretty, pale, pink petunias now, and they blossom at a great rate all summer."

"I know a plant we ought to try," offered James. "It's the plant they make Persian Insect Powder out of."

"The Persian daisy," guessed Mr. Emerson. "It would be fun to try that."

"Wouldn't it be easier to buy the insect powder?" asked practical Ethel Brown.

"Very much," laughed her grandfather, "but this is good fun because it doesn't always blossom 'true,' and you never know whether you'll get a pink or a deep rose color. Now, let me see," continued Mr. Emerson thoughtfully, "you've arranged for your hollyhocks and your phlox--those will be blooming by the latter part of July, and I suppose you've put in several sowings of sweetpeas?"

They all laughed, for Roger's demand for sweetpeas had resulted in a huge amount of seeds being sown in all three of the gardens.

"Where are we now?" continued Mr. Emerson.

"Now there ought to be something that will come into its glory about the first of August," answered Helen.

"What do you say to poppies?"

"Are there pink poppies?"

"O, beauties! Big bears, and little bears, and middle-sized bears; single and double, and every one of them a joy to look upon!"

"Put down poppies two or three times," laughed Helen in answer to her grandfather's enthusiasm.

"And while we're on the letter 'P' in the seed catalogue," added Mr.

Emerson, "order a few packages of single portulaca. There are delicate shades of pink now, and it's a useful little plant to grow at the feet of tall ones that have no low-growing foliage and leave the ground bare."

"It would make a good border for us at some time."

"You might try it at Dorothy's large garden. There'll be s.p.a.ce there to have many different kinds of borders."

"We'll have to keep our eyes open for a pink lady's slipper over in the damp part of the Clarks' field," said Roger.

"O, I speak for it for my wild garden," cried Helen.

"You ought to find one about the end of July, and as that is a long way off you can put off the decision as to where to place it when you transplant it," observed their grandfather dryly.

"Mother finds verbenas and 'ten week stocks' useful for cutting," said Margaret. "They're easy to grow and they last a long time and there are always blossoms on them for the house."

"Pink?" asked Ethel Blue, her pencil poised until she was a.s.sured.

"A pretty shade of pink, both of them, and they're low growing, so you can put them forward in the beds after you take out the bulbs that blossomed early."

"How are we going to know just when to plant all these things so they'll come out when we want them to?" asked Della, whose city life had limited her gardening experience to a few summers at Chautauqua where they went so late in the season that their flower beds had been planted for them and were already blooming when they arrived.

"Study your catalogues, my child," James instructed her.

"But they don't always tell," objected Della, who had been looking over several.

"That's because the seedsmen sell to people all over the country--people living in all sorts of climates and with all sorts of soils. The best way is to ask the seedsman where you buy your seeds to indicate on the package or in a letter what the sowing time should be for our part of the world."

"Then we'll bother Grandfather all we can," threatened Ethel Brown seriously. "He's given us this list in the order of their blossoming--"

"More or less," interposed Mr. Emerson. "Some of them over-lap, of course. It's roughly accurate, though."

"You can't stick them in a week apart and have them blossom a week apart?" asked Della.

"Not exactly. It takes some of them longer to germinate and make ready to bloom than it does others. But of course it's true in a general way that the first to be planted are the first to bloom."

"We haven't put in the late ones yet," Ethel Blue reminded Mr. Emerson.

"Asters, to begin with. I don't see how there'll be enough room in your small bed to make much of a show with asters. I should put some in, of course, in May, but there's a big opportunity at the new garden to have a splendid exhibition of them. Some asters now are almost as large and as handsome as chrysanthemums--astermums, they call them--and the pink ones are especially lovely."

"Put a big 'D' against 'asters,'" advised Roger. "That will mean that there must be a large number put into Dorothy's new garden."

"The aster will begin to blossom in August and will continue until light frost and the chrysanthemums will begin a trifle later and will last a little longer unless there is a killing frost."

"Can we get blossoms on chrysanthemums the first, year?" asked Margaret, who had not found that true in her experience in her mother's garden.

"There are some new kinds that will blossom the first year, the seedsmen promise. I'd like to have you try some of them."

"Mother has two or three pink ones--well established plants--that she's going to let us move to the pink bed," said Helen.

"The chrysanthemums will end your procession," said Mr. Emerson, "but you mustn't forget to put in some mallow. They are easy to grow and blossom liberally toward the end of the season."

"Can we make candy marshmallows out of it?"

"You can, but it would be like the Persian insect powder--it would be easier to buy it. But it has a handsome pink flower and you must surely have it on your list."

"I remember when Mother used to have the greatest trouble getting cosmos to blossom," said Margaret. "The frost almost always caught it. Now there is a kind that comes before the frost."

"Cosmos is a delight at the end of the season," remarked Mr. Emerson.

"Almost all the autumn plants are stocky and st.u.r.dy, but cosmos is as graceful as a summer plant and as delicate as a spring blossom. You can wind up your floral year with asters and mallow and chrysanthemums and cosmos all blooming at once."

"Now for the blue beds," said Tom, excusing himself for looking at his watch on the plea that he and Della had to go back to New York by a comparatively early train.

"If you're in a hurry I'll just give you a few suggestions," said Mr.

Emerson. "Really blue flowers are not numerous, I suppose you have noticed."

"We've decided on ageratum for the border and larkspur and monkshood for the back," said Ethel Brown.