THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN 



scientific knowledge, or whose writings have been 

 of world-wide value to the gardening public. 



Mr. E. V. Lucas has a nice paragraph on rose 

 names: "Most often it happens that the name is 

 ugly. ... A rose should have a name as im- 

 mortal as itself. The Earl of Penzance knew this 

 when he called his sweetbriars after Scott's hero- 

 ines. Shakespeare, so far as England is con- 

 cerned, might give names to all our new roses." 



Do seedsmen name flowers for good customers ? 

 I mightily fear it ! Names, to be perfection, 

 should first carry some descriptive quality, and 

 next they should be words of beauty. Many ex- 

 amples might be given: Dawn, most aptly fit for 

 the lovely pale-pink gladiolus which it adorns; 

 Capri (a name, of course, to conjure with), a true 

 felicity as a name for a delphinium of a ravishing 

 tone of sky-blue; Eyebright, for that wondrous 

 daffodil with scarlet centre; Lady Gay, the hap- 

 piest hit in names for that sweet little rose which 

 will dance anywhere in the sun and wind of June. 



A sight most lovely is, of a summer's evening, 

 to see Delphinium Moerheimi lifting its white spires 

 of flowers against a green background of shrub- 

 bery with a blue mist of sea-holly below it, and 

 in the foreground, rising from gypsophila masses, 

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