The bog garden consists merely of very wet ground in which a host of interesting plants flourish. It must, of course, be beside a pond or along a stream. In spring the brown woolly fronds of cinnamon fern will first show themselves, uncoiling as they rise. The swamp rose-mallow (Hibiscus moscheutos) will give a wealth of great white or pink flowers in mid-summer. In autumn blue mists of asters or a yellow glow of coreopsis and dazzling shafts of cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis) will brighten the spot.
HANDLING CUT FLOWERS
Water-lilies do well as cut flowers if they are properly handled. The flower selected for cutting must be newly opened or just about to open. In nature the life of each bloom is limited to three or four days, but in the house it may keep a day or two longer. Occasionally death seems to overtake the motor centres while the flower is still open, and then it remains several days before the petals wither.
The new flower may be recognised by these features: (I) The stamens spread apart at the centre of the flower, leaving a free passage down to the stigma; (2) the anthers are plump and round and have not yet begun to shed any pollen; (3) the basin-like stigma is filled with liquid excreted from its surface.
The flower stalk is scarcely able to supply the petals with water; the cut flower should be floated in a dish or, if placed in a vase, the vase should be full to the brim with water, the flower projecting as little as possible. When carried from the sunny garden into the house the flower is likely to close, on account of the diminished light, but it will open again next morning as well as if it were outside.