Tiarella cordifolia.
Height, 12 inches.
Hollyhock, Pink Beauty.
See page [105].
Height, 9 feet.
The Primrose garden is now in beauty, but I have so much to say about it that I have given it a chapter to itself towards the end of the book.
The Scotch firs are shedding their pollen; a flowering branch shaken or struck with a stick throws out a pale-yellow cloud. Heavy rain will wash it out, so that after a storm the sides of the roads and paths look as if powdered sulphur had been washed up in drifts. The sun has gained great power, and on still bright days sharp snicking sounds are to be heard from the firs. The dry cones of last year are opening, and the flattened seeds with their paper-like edges are fluttering down. Another sound, much like it but just a shade sharper and more staccato, is heard from the Gorse bushes, whose dry pods are flying open and letting fall the hard, polished, little bean-like seeds.
Border Auriculas are making a brave show. Nothing in the flower year is more interesting than a bed of good seedlings of the Alpine class. I know nothing better for pure beauty of varied colouring among early flowers. Except in varieties of Salpiglossis, such rich gradation of colour, from pale lilac to rich purple, and from rosy pink to deepest crimson, is hardly to be found in any one family of plants. There are varieties of cloudings of smoky-grey, sometimes approaching black, invading, and at the same time enhancing, the purer colours, and numbers of shades of half-tones of red and purple, such as are comprised within the term murrey of heraldry, and tender blooms of one colour, sulphurs and milk-whites—all with the admirable texture and excellent perfume that belong to the "Bear's-ears" of old English gardens. For practical purposes the florist's definition of a good Auricula is of little value; that is for the show-table, and, as Bacon says, "Nothing to the true pleasure of a garden." The qualities to look for in the bed of seedlings are not the narrowing ones of proportion of eye to tube, of exact circle in the circumference of the individual pip, and so on, but to notice whether the plant has a handsome look and stands up well, and is a delightful and beautiful thing as a whole.
Tulipa Retroflexa.
