Pink
Hardy Perennial.
One foot. Flowers several colours (the most prevalent
white), in June.
The common white Pink is one of the best and
most familiar of garden flowers, of the early
summer.
Its hardiness and accommodating character,
the abundance and beauty of its flowers and their
spicy smell, the fine blue-green of its foliage,
never changing all the year, all unite to make
it a sine quâ non in English gardens of
every scale and order.
It will flourish in any
ordinary garden soil, and is quite at home in
places where the Carnation altogether fails.
It
is perhaps most effective when planted in lines
as an edging to beds and borders.
Young plants
put out six inches apart will in two years form
a small hedge about eight inches high and half
a yard wide.
In June it will be a mass of bloom,
and directly the flowers turn brown they may be
clipped off with the shears, and the edging is
trim and beautiful till next summer.
The Common
Pink may be propagated with the greatest ease
by pulling off from the old plants small side-growths
of the current season, and dibbling them in a
plot of light soil where they can have shade from
hot suns.
The best time for this is just after
the plants have gone out of flower.
With a little
attention to weeding and sprinkling with water
in hot weather, the cuttings will be nicely rooted
by September, and may be put out in their places
any time during the winter.
After strong frost
they should be looked over, and any that have
been lifted and loosened by the freezing and thawing
must be carefully firmed down.
It is best to raise
a batch of cuttings every year, as the old plants
become leggy in three or four seasons, and after
that generally decay.
The coloured Pinks are not nearly so much grown
as the common white; they lack the latter’s
enduring and accommodating habit.
They are fringed
at the edges of the petals; their colours are
chiefly rose, pink and crimson, selfs or laced.
There is also a race of single Pinks with dark
eyes or rings, purple or crimson on white or rose
grounds.
Among the named double Pinks there are one or
two white varieties which are rivals to the common
Pink, not only in beauty but in ease of growth.
Mrs. Sinkins and Her Majesty are some inches taller
than the old white; their flowers have the size
and substance of a Carnation, with a greenish-yellow
tinge in the heart of their stout crumpled petals.
Mrs. Sinkins is invaluable; it should be planted
in groups of two or three plants in mixed borders,
and in large widths if space can be spared.
Cuttings
(or “pipings”) should be taken yearly
early in August, and made in the way described
under the Common White Pink.
Pinks may be raised from seed; the method is the
same as that given for growing seedling Carnations.
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