Now, giving a pleasant rest and refreshment to the eye after the blues and greys, is a well-shaped drift of the pale sulphur African Marigold. It was meant to be the dwarf variety, but, as it grows two and a half feet high, it has been pulled down as it grew. Some of it has been brought down some way over the edge of the path, where it breaks the general front line pleasantly and shows off its good soft colouring. We grow only this pale colour and a good form of the splendid orange. The intermediate one, the full yellow African Marigold, has, to my eye, a raw quality that I am glad to avoid, and I have other plants that give the strong yellow colour better. Now at the back are some plants of the single Hollyhock Hibiscus ficifolius, white and pale yellow, recalling, as we merge into the stronger yellows, the colouring of the region just left. They are partly intergrouped with that excellent plant Rudbeckia Golden Glow, brilliant, long-lasting, and capable of varied kinds of useful treatment.
Now we come to a group of the perennial Sunflowers; a good form of the double Helianthus multiflorus in front, and behind it the large single kind of the same plant. By the side of these is a rather large group of a garden form of H. orgyalis. This is one of the perennial Sunflowers that is usually considered not good enough for careful gardening. It grows very tall, and bears a smallish bunch of yellow flowers at the top. If this were all it could do it would not be in my flower border. But in front of it grows a patch of the fine Tansy-like Achillea Eupatorium, and in front of this again a wide-spreading group of Eryngium oliverianum—beautiful all through July. When the bloom of these is done the tall Sunflower is trained down over them—this pulling down, as in the case of so many plants, causing it to throw up flower-stalks from the axils of every pair of leaves; so that in September the whole thing is a sheet of bloom. Thus the plant that was hardly worth a place in the border becomes, at its flowering time, one of the brightest ornaments of the garden. Other plants that are in front of the Sunflower, that have also passed out of bloom, are the Scarlet Bee-balm (Monarda) and the very useful alpine Groundsel (Senecio artemisiæfolius).
Next we have an important group of a large-leaved Canna, the handsomest foliage in the border; good to see when the sun is behind and the light comes through the leaves. Here also, at the back, is a patch of Hollyhocks—one very dark, almost a claret-red, and a fine, full red inclining to blood-colour. They tower up together, and close to them are Dahlias, the dark red Lady Ardilaun, deep scarlet Cochineal, bright scarlet Fire King, and its variety Orange Fire King, now the most brilliant piece of colouring in the garden. These lead on to a gorgeous company—Phlox Coquelicot, scarlet Pentstemon, orange African Marigold, scarlet Gladiolus, and, to the front, a brilliant dwarf scarlet Salvia; Helenium pumilum and scarlet and orange dwarf Nasturtium. Here and there within this mass of bright colouring there is a patch of the fine deep yellow Coreopsis lanceolata, a plant of long-enduring bloom, or rather of long succession, for, if the dead flowers are removed it will be brightly blossomed for a good three months.
As this gorgeous mass occupies a large space in the flower border, I have thought well to subdue it here and there with the cloudy masses of Gypsophila paniculata. Five-year-old plants of this form masses of the pretty mist-like bloom four feet across and as much high. This bold introduction of grey among the colour-masses has considerable pictorial value. As the grey changes, towards the end of the month, to a brownish tone, some of the tall Nasturtiums are allowed to grow over the bushes of Gypsophila.
YUCCA FILAMENTOSA VAR. FLACCIDA.
THE GREY BORDERS: STACHYS, GYPSOPHILA, LILY, ACHILLEA PEARL AND PINK HOLLYHOCK.
Now we have got beyond the middle of the length of the border, and the colour changes again to the clear and pale yellows, and then again to the grey foliage as at the beginning. Where this occurs, at a little more than two-thirds of the way along the border, it is crossed by the path, leading, through an archway in the wall closed by a door, to the garden beyond. This cross-path is flanked by groups of Yuccas, slightly raised, as will be seen in some of the illustrations. (See pp. 51, 102.) Yuccas all like a raised mound and some good loam to grow in. I have them here as well as at the two extreme ends of the border. No plants make a handsomer full-stop to any definite garden scheme. The grey treatment comprises the two Yucca mounds to right and left of the cross-path; the other grey plants are as before—Cineraria maritima, Santolina, Stachys, Elymus and Rue—but at this end, besides some plants with white, pink and palest yellow colouring, the other flowers are not blues but purples, light and dark. Among these a very useful thing is Ageratum; not the dwarf Ageratum, though this is good too in its place, but the ordinary Ageratum mexicanum, a plant that grows about two feet high. This is also the place for some of the earliest Michaelmas Daisies that will bloom in September, such as Aster acris and A. Shortii. At the back there are Dahlias, white and pale yellow, with white and sulphur Hollyhocks, and, in the middle spaces, pale pink Gladiolus, double Saponaria officinalis, and pale pink Pentstemon. At the back, also, there is a clump of Globe Thistle (Echinops) and a grand growth of Clematis Jackmanni, following in season of bloom, and partly led over, a white Everlasting Pea, that in the earlier summer was trained to conceal the dying stems of the red-orange Lilies that bloomed in June.