Wild Lupins
An American, who is a fond gardener, once expressed astonishment to me that English people were content to plant lupins on their borders. The flower is a wild weed in some parts of the American continent. In company with the delphinium that it precedes in date of flowerings it is perhaps the most popular of all so-called perennials ; and the reason lies in the immense range of colour that florists, chiefly English florists, have bred into it. The shades of mauve and salmon pink in some of the named sorts (such as Daylight) are irreplaceable. It • is certainly much the best plan, as Miss Rohde has recently recommended, to grow some of these from the pure seed only procurable from the best firms ; but it is an amusing plant to grow from chance seeds, which germinate freely and may give the oddest results. Personally a tree lupin at this moment gives me more pleasure than any other flower, chiefly because it scents the whole garden, playing the part of the fields of beans which today make even the plainest roads a pleasure to the motorist.
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