12 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 



end of August, nobody else can possibly 

 climb so fast. Her flower is of no account ; 

 but it no more is needed than the leaves 

 to which belong so much of grace and 

 charm. In a sunny angle of Peach 

 Corner, there is a William Richardson 

 rose. Beautiful as it is, it comes not 

 near, nor never will, to the wonder of 

 one that grew in the gardens of La 

 Mortola, nearly twenty feet high, and 

 crowned with hundreds of orange-hearted 

 roses. The rose called, 'Ideale,' delights 

 and disappoints by turns in the opposite 

 corner. In the border near them, flourished 

 in the later days of summer, a strange 

 black dahlia. 



It is altogether unlike its name, and yet 

 dahlia it is most certainly, by the leaves 

 and the stiff long stalk, by the bud and the 

 flower and the root. At first sight, you 

 would say it was a potentilla of unusual 

 size. For a dahlia, it is very small indeed ; 

 and the velvet-black of it never fails to 

 charm, whether growing in the open border 

 or mixed in when cut, with very bright 

 late-blooming flowers. In late summer 



