The mistress of the Villino, a foolish and impetuous person, has three times made the same mistake and omitted to ascertain the blooming season of plants which she wished to be in beauty together. So the four Weeping Standards Stella, are considerably in advance of the four Dorothys which alternate with them; and the standards Soleil d’Or were quite over before the Conrad Meyers appeared in the Lily Walk; and the contrast of pink and yellow was what had been aimed at!
In the same manner she had intended the Garland Roses to foam up in two splendid white pillars at each end of the long length of Dorothy Perkins at the opposite side of the Blue Border terrace. Of course the Garland is becoming unsightly before the fire-pink of the Dorothy begins to show in any profusion.
The garden—except on the upper terrace, which with Heliotrope, Lobelia, and the climbing Ceanothus keeps to the faint cool blues, untroubled by the efflorescence of the White Pet ‹which, by the way, has completely eaten out Perle des Rouges› and the very faint pink of the Ivy-Leaf Geraniums—except for the upper terrace, the garden, we say, is growing pink. What with the Verbenas and the Red Roses and the cheery coloured Ivy-Leaf Geranium called Jersey Beauty, in the Dutch garden, and the general ramp of Dorothy everywhere, it is a mass of pink.
Another year we must have more Penstemons. They are charming things, and as good as they are beautiful. In a garden nothing is beautiful that is not good, which is another facet of its likeness to Paradise.
We caress the idea of a border where perennial Gypsophila, large bushes of Monarda, Penstemons and Lavender should group and contrast and delight and rest the eye.
There is a walk in a wonderful garden not far from here—a garden which brings a kind of fainting, despairing envy to the soul of Loki’s Grandmother—where Lavender and Penstemons make the happiest possible effect. The walk itself is a thing of beauty; through woodland on one side, the border in question runs quite a long way against a low parapet on the other. Below this parapet the ground slopes down, and at the end of the walk there is so abrupt a fall that it seems almost to end in mid-air with a vast panorama far beneath. And on the side of the flowery border a shelving precipice falls away out of which giant stone pines hang against the distant horizon. The Lavender has grown to a hedge, and the varying soft pinks of the Penstemons run vividly against its mistiness.
Would that walk, and that border, and that view, were ours!