Not only do I love to see the same dear things year after year, and to welcome the same odor, grace, and hue; but I love to find them in the same places. I like a garden in which plants have been growing in one spot for a long time, where they have a fixed home and surroundings. In our garden the same flowers shoulder each other comfortably and crowd each other a little, year after year. They look, my sister says, like long-established neighbors, like old family friends, not as if they had just "moved in," and didn't know each other's names and faces. Plants grow better when they are among flower friends. I suppose we have to transplant some plants, sometimes; but I would try to keep old friends together even in those removals. They would be lonely when they opened their eyes after the winter's sleep, and saw strange flower forms and unknown faces around them. [Illustration: Larkspur and Phlox.] For flowers have friendships, and antipathies as well. How Canterbury Bells and Foxgloves love to grow side by side! And Sweet Williams, with Foxgloves, as here shown. And in my sister's garden Larkspur always starts up by white Phlox--see a bit of the border on this page. Whatever may influence these docile alliances, it isn't a proper sense of fitness of color; for Tiger Lilies dearly love to grow by crimson-purple Phlox, a most inharmonious association, and you can hardly separate them. If a flower dislikes her neighbor in the garden, she moves quietly away, I don't know where or how. Sometimes she dies, but at any rate she is gone. It is so queer; I have tried every year to make Feverfew grow in this bed, and it won't do it, though it grows across the path. There is some flower here that the pompous Feverfew doesn't care to associate with. Not the Larkspur, for they are famous friends--perhaps it is the Sweet William, who is rather a plain fellow. In general flowers are very sociable with each other, but they have some preferences, and these are powerful ones. [Illustration: Sweet William and Foxglove.] It is amusing to read in no less than five recent English "garden-books," by flower-loving souls, the solemn advice that if you wish a beautiful garden effect you "must plant the great Oriental Poppy by the side of the White Lupine." "Thou say'st an undisputed thing In such a solemn way." The truth is, you have very little to do with it. That Poppy chooses to keep company with the White Lupine, and to that impulse you owe your fine garden effect. The Poppy is the slyest magician of the whole garden. He comes and goes at will. This year a few blooms, nearly all in one corner; next year a blaze of color banded across the middle of the garden like the broad sash of a court chamberlain. Then a single grand blossom quite alone in the pansy bed, while another pushes up between the tight close leaves of the box edging:--the Poppy is _queer_. [Illustration: Plume Poppy.]