The yellow flowers are the pale sulphur African Marigold and pale yellow and whitish yellow tall Snapdragons, with bordering masses of variegated Coltsfoot, and the Golden Feather Feverfew allowed to bloom. The pink colourings are the wide-headed Sedum spectabile, pink Japan Anemone and a few pale pink Gladioli. The whites are Dahlias Constance and Henry Patrick, Pyrethrum uliginosum, the charming perennial Aster Colerette Blanche, a taller white or yellowish white Aster with rough stems and harsh-feeling foliage that I know as A. umbellatus. Here also are white Japan Anemones, white Snapdragons and white China Asters of the large, long-stemmed late-blooming kind that were formerly known as Vick's, but are now called Mammoth. Among the grey bordering plants are groups of dwarf Ageratum, one of the best of the tender plants of September and quite excellent with the accompanying grey foliage. The grey bordering is not merely an edging but a general front groundwork, running here and there a yard deep into the border.
Begonias are at their best throughout the month of September. Beds of Begonias alone never seem to me quite satisfactory. Here there is no opportunity for growing them in beds, but I have them in a bit of narrow border that is backed by shrubs, but is kept constantly enriched. A groundwork of the large-leaved form of Megasea cordifolia is planted so as to surround variously sized groups of Begonias—groups of from five to nine plants. The setting of the more solid leaves gives the Begonias a better appearance and makes their bright bloom tell more vividly. They follow in this sequence of colouring: yellow, white, palest pink, full pink, rose, deep red, deep rose, salmon-rose, red-lead colour or orange-scarlet, scarlet, red-lead and orange.
It is a matter of great regret that the best kind of Dahlias for garden effect have lost favour with nurserymen, so that it is now difficult, if not impossible, to obtain from them the most desirable kinds. These are a selection of those that were first called Cactus Dahlias, much more free in form than the old show Dahlias, but with the petals not attenuated and pointed as they are in the modern Cactus kinds. The greater number of these, pretty though their individual blooms are on the show-table, are but of little use in the garden, whereas the old sorts, King of the Cactus, Cochineal, Lady Ardilaun, Fire King and Orange Fire King are among the most gorgeous of our September flowers. In the same class are: Mrs. Hawkins, palest lemon flushed with pink; William Pearse, bright yellow; Lady M. Marsham, bright copper; J. W. Standling, orange, (the two last about four feet high); and the two good whites, Constance and Henry Patrick. Of these, all in my opinion indispensable kinds, only Fire King, as far as I am aware, survives in contemporary trade lists.
CHAPTER X
WOOD AND SHRUBBERY EDGES
Opportunities for good gardening are so often overlooked that it may be well to draw attention to some of those that are most commonly neglected.
When woodland joins garden ground there is too often a sudden jolt; the wood ends with a hard line, sometimes with a path along it, accentuating the defect. When the wood is of Scotch Fir of some age there is a monotonous emptiness of naked trunk and bare ground. In wild moorland this is characteristic and has its own beauty; it may even pleasantly accompany the garden when there is only a view into it here and there; but when the path passes along, furlong after furlong, with no attempt to bring the wood into harmony with the garden, then the monotony becomes oppressive and the sudden jolt is unpleasantly perceived. There is the well-stocked garden and there is the hollow wood with no cohesion between the two—no sort of effort to make them join hands.
It would have been better if from the first the garden had not been brought quite so close to the wood, then the space between, anything from twenty-five to forty feet, might have been planted so as to bring them into unison. In such a case the path would go, not next the trees but along the middle of the neutral ground and would be so planted as to belong equally to garden and wood. The trees would then take their place as the bounding and sheltering feature. It is better to plan it like this at first than to gain the space by felling the outer trees, because the trees at the natural wood edge are better furnished with side branches. Such ground on the shady side of the Scotch Firs would be the best possible site for a Rhododendron walk, and for Azaleas and Kalmias, kept distinct from the Rhododendrons. Then the Scotch Fir indicates the presence of a light peaty soil; the very thing for that excellent but much-neglected undershrub Gaultheria Shallon. This is one of the few things that will grow actually under the Firs, not perhaps in the densest part of an old wood, but anywhere about its edges, or where any light comes in at a clearing or along a cart-way. When once established it spreads with a steady abundance of increase, creeping underground and gradually clothing more and more of the floor of the wood. The flower and fruit have already been shown at pp. 18-19.
