CHAPTER VIII
THE FLOWER BORDER IN AUGUST
By the second week of August the large flower border is coming to its best. The western grey end, with its main planting of hoary and glaucous foliage—Yucca, Sea Kale, Cineraria maritima, Rue, Elymus, Santolina, Stachys, &c.—now has Yucca flaccida in flower. This neat, small Yucca, one of the varieties or near relatives of filamentosa, is a grand plant for late summer. A well-established clump throws up a quantity of flower-spikes of that highly ornamental character that makes the best of these fine plants so valuable. White Everlasting Pea, planted about three feet from the back, is trained on stout pea-sticks over the space occupied earlier by the Delphiniums and the Spiræas. A little of it runs into a bush of Golden Privet. This Golden Privet is one of the few shrubs that has a place in the flower border. Its clean, cheerful, bright yellow gives a note of just the right colour all through the summer. It has also a solidity of aspect that enhances by contrast the graceful lines of the foliage of a clump of the great Japanese striped grass Eulalia, which stands within a few feet of it, seven feet high, shooting upright, but with the ends of the leaves recurved.
Snapdragons, tall white and tall yellow, spire up five feet high, following the earlier Foxgloves. At the back is the pretty pink Dahlia Asia, with sulphur and pale pink Hollyhocks. A little further along, and staked out so as to take the place of the clumps of Verbascum Chaixii that were so fine in the end of June, is Dahlia Mrs. Hawkins—palest yellow with a slight pink flush. Forward is a group of a Pentstemon of palest pink colouring named Spitzberg, that I had from Messrs. Barr's nursery, then a patch or two of palest blue Spiderwort, and, quite to the front, in any spaces there may be among the grey foliage, Lobelia "Cobalt Blue," the taller Lobelia tenuior, and the pretty little blue-flowered Cape Daisy, Agathea cœlestis.
The whole border is backed by a stone wall eleven feet high, now fully clothed with shrubs and plants that take their place in the colour-scheme, either for tint of bloom or mass of foliage. Thus the red-leaved Claret Vine shows as background to the rich red region and Robinia hispida stands where its pink clusters will tell rightly; Choisya and Cistus cyprius where their dark foliage and white bloom will be of value; the greyish foliage and abundant pale lilac blossom of Abutilon vitifolium in the grey and purple region, and the pale green foliage of the deciduous Magnolia conspicua showing as a background to the tender blue of a charming pale Delphinium.
The shrubs and plants on the wall are not all there because they are things rare and precious or absolutely needing the shelter of the wall, though some of them are glad of it, but because they give a background that either harmonises in detail with what is in front or will help to enrich or give general cohesion to the picture. The front of the border has some important foliage giving a distinctly blue effect; prominent among it Sea Kale. The flower-stems are cut hard back in the earlier summer, and it is now in handsome fresh leaf. Further back is the fine blue foliage of Lyme Grass (Elymus arenarius), a plant of our sea-shores, but of much value for blue effects in the garden.
TALL CAMPANULAS PYRAMIDALIS AND LACTIFLORA IN A GREY BORDER.
Now is the time to begin to use our reserve of plants in pots. Of these the most useful are the Hydrangeas. They are dropped into any vacant spaces, more or less in groups, in the two ends of the border where there is grey foliage, their pale pink colouring agreeing with these places. Their own leafage is a rather bright green, but we get them so well bloomed that but few leaves are seen, and we arrange as cleverly as we can that the rest shall be more or less hidden by the surrounding bluish foliage. I stand a few paces off, directing the formation of the groups; considering their shape in relation to the border as a whole. I say to the gardener that I want a Hydrangea in such a place; and tell him to find the nearest place where it can be dropped in. Sometimes this dropping in, for the pots have to be partly sunk, comes in the way of some established plant. If it is a deep-rooted perennial that takes three or four years to come to its strength, like an Eryngium or a Dictamnus, of course I avoid encroaching on its root-room. But if it is anything that blooms the season after it is planted, and of which I have plenty in reserve, such as an Anthemis, a Tradescantia, or a Helenium, I sacrifice a portion of the plant-group, knowing that it can easily be replaced. But then by August many of the plants have spread widely above and there is space below. Lilium longiflorum in pots is used in the same way, and for the most part in this blue end of the border, though there are also some at the further, purple end, and just a flash of their white beauty in the middle region of strong reds.
In order to use both blue and purple in the flower border, this cool, western, grey-foliaged end has the blues, and the further, eastern end the purples. For although I like to use colour as a general rule in harmonies rather than contrasts, I have a dislike to bringing together blues and purples. At this end, therefore, there are flowers of pure blue—Delphinium, Anchusa, Salvia, Blue Cape Daisy and Lobelia, and it is only when the main mass of blue, of Delphiniums and Anchusas, is over that even the presence of the pale grey-blue of Campanula lactiflora could be tolerated. Near the front is another pale grey-blue, that of Clematis davidiana, just showing a few blooms, but not yet fully out.