THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN 



of personal taste; but it is one on which discus- 

 sion should be agreeable and fruitful. It happens 

 that I object to a mixture of colors in crocus, or, 

 for that matter, in anything. Not long ago a 

 well-known landscape gardener, a woman, re- 

 marked that a border of mixed Darwin tulips 

 was one of the most successful of her many plant- 

 ings. In such a hand, I am sure this was so. If 

 such planting were done exactly as it should be, 

 with sufficient boldness, a sure knowledge of what 

 was wanted, and great variety of colors and tones 

 of those colors, the result would surely show a 

 tapestry again thrown along the earth — a tapes- 

 try grander in conception and more glorious in 

 kind than the one woven of the tiny blossoms 

 mentioned above. But with the average gar- 

 dener a mixture, so called, is a thing of danger. 

 What more hopeless than a timid one ! "Be bold, 

 be bold, but not too bold" — Spenserian advice 

 holdspiere. 



To return to crocus. Awhile ago, in the bor- 

 ders of this small Michigan place of ours, there 

 was in one place a most lovely carpet of colonies 

 of pale-lavender crocus Maximilian, with grape 

 hyacinth {Muscari azureum) running in and out 

 in peninsulas, bays, and islands. Tall white crocus 

 78 



