FLOWER PICTURES 157 



at the side of the front door in the old-fashioned 

 way; with a rambler on a porch, arch or gateway; 

 with a woodbine on a juniper or a wistaria on a 

 pine ; with a nearly submerged boulder and a patch 

 of Phlox subulata and so on to the end of a chapter, 

 limited in length only by failure to see glorious 

 opportunities. 



And there are innumerable lesser opportunities. 

 A little patch of the old Campanula rapunculoides 

 or Sedum spectabile close against the gray stones of 

 the foundation of a house makes a picture as 

 charming in its way as many of the more pretentious 

 ones. Again, a small colony of foam flower (Tia- 

 rella cordifolia), or bloodroot, or white violet, in 

 the shade of a shrub, with brown twigs above it 

 and brown earth around, is no less delectable. 

 Do not despise the brown things even some scat- 

 tered leaves of the garden's winter blanket. Nor 

 fail to use the least of material ; three purple crocus 

 blooms and their grass-like foliage, and only the 

 soil for a background, will make a miniature at any 

 rate. 



So far the pictures spoken of have been seasonal 

 in evidence at this or that time of year and then 

 gone until another twelve months shall have come 

 around. These present the minimum of difficulty 

 and are therefore the best for the beginner. But a 

 great deal of the pleasure of making garden pictures 

 lies in the much more complicated task of arranging 

 a succession of them in a single spot, nature to seem 

 to evolve one from the other as the season pro- 



