Then with the eye full of the warm colouring of dying vegetation and the few remaining blooms of perennial Helianthus and half-hardy marigolds of the fading borders, to pass through some screening evergreens to the fresh, clean, lively colouring of the lilac, purple and white Daisies, is like a sudden change from decrepit age to the brightness of youth, from the gloom of late autumn to the joy of full springtide.
Another excellent way of growing the perennial Asters is among shrubs, and preferably among Rhododendrons, whose rich green forms a fine background for their tender grace, and whose stiff branches give them the support they need.
THE ALCOVE, ARLEY
FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF
Mrs. Campbell
ARLEY
Throughout the length and breadth of England it would be hard to find borders of hardy flowers handsomer or in any way better done than those at Arley in Cheshire. The house, an old one, was much enlarged by the late Mr. R. E. Egerton-Warburton, and the making of the gardens, now come to their young maturity, was the happy work of many years of his life. Here we see the spirit of the old Italian gardening, in no way slavishly imitated, but wholesomely assimilated and sanely interpreted to fit the needs of the best kind of English garden of the formal type, as to its general plan and structure. It is easy to see in the picture how happily mated are formality and freedom; the former in the garden’s comfortable walls of living greenery with their own appropriate ornaments, and the latter in the grandly grown borders of hardy flowers.
The subject of the picture is the main feature in the garden plan. A path some fifteen feet wide, with grassy verges of ample width, and deep borders of hardy flowers. What is shown is about one fourth of the whole length. At the back of the right-hand border is the high old wall of the kitchen garden; on the left, as grand a wall of yew, ten feet high and five feet thick, its straight line pleasantly broken and varied by shaped buttresses of clipped yew, whose forms take that distinct light and shade, and strong variations of solidity of green colouring, that make the surfaces of our clipped English yew so valuable a ground-work for masses of brilliant flowers.