AUTUMN FLOWERS 



How stout and strong and full of well-being they are — the autumn flowers 

 of our English gardens ! Hollyhocks, Tritomas, Sunflowers, Phloxes, 

 among many others, and lastly, Michaelmas Daisies. The flowers of the 

 early year are lowly things, though none the less lovable ; Primroses, 

 Double Daisies, Anemones, small Irises, and all the beautiful host of 

 small Squill and Snow-Glory and little early Daffodils, Then come the 

 taller Daffodils and Wallflowers, Tulips, and the old garden Peonies and 

 the lovely Tree Peonies. Then the true early summer flowers. 



If you notice, as the seasons progress, the average of the flowering 

 plants advances in stature. By June this average has risen again, with the 

 Sea Hollies and Flag Irises, the Chinese Peonies and the earher Roses. 

 And now there are some quite tall things. Mulleins seven and eight feet 

 high, some of them from last year's seed, but the greater number from 

 the seed-shedding of the year before ; the great white-leaved Mullein 

 (Verboscum olympicum), taking four years to come to flowering strength. 

 But what a flower it is, when it is at last thrown up ! What a glorious 

 candelabrum of branching bloom ! Perhaps there is no other hardy plant 

 whose bulk of bloom on a single stem fills so large a space. And what 

 a grand effect it has when it is rightly planted ; when its great sulphur 

 spire shows, half or wholly shaded, against the dusk of a wood edge or in 

 some sheltered bay, where garden is insensibly melting into woodland. 

 This is the place for these grand plants (for their flowers flag in hot 

 sunshine), in company with white Foxglove and the tall yellow Evening 

 Primrose, another tender bloom that is shy of sunlight. Four o'clock of 

 a June morning is the time to see these fine things at their best, when the 



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