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Fourteen Favorites Among the Perennials: Aquilegia

Aquilegia canadensis, bearing small flowers of yellow and scarlet hue, is a native of this country and a pleasing candidate for the wild garden. Aquilegia caerulea, the Rocky Mountain columbine, is of the long-spurred type, its flowers being pale blue and white, and it grows to a height of about two feet. It does not seem to thrive so well in the gardens of the East as do some of the other varieties.

Aquilegia glandulosa. Among the very earliest flowering columbines is this exquisite sort. It belongs to the medium-spurred group. It comes into flower with the early heralds of spring and its blue-and-white wide-spreading blooms are of fairylike grace. Its foliage, like velvet in quality, has rich coppery shadings.

Aquilegia alpina is another wee flower of great charm. It has come to us from the Alps and the Pyrenees and has made itself quite happily at home in the rock gardens of America. The flowers are clear blue or blue and white and are diminutive in size, the flower stalk being hardly ten inches high. Aquilegia chrysantha, though a more common sort, has much to commend it and is almost the only perpetually blooming columbine. It comes into flower a trifle later than most of the other members of the family, but is frequently still in flower when nipped by frost in October. Its foliage is luxuriant and attractive throughout the summer, which is more than can be said of many of the columbines. The flowers are a clear, pure yellow with gracefully slender spurs.

Delphinium (Larkspur) Perhaps the most beautiful and most beloved of all perennials is the delphinium. A gardener may survey a well-grown clump of larkspur with much the same feeling of pride and satisfaction with which an artist surveys a well-painted canvas. He may rightly feel that he has, in partnership with the Almighty, produced a real work of art.