COLOR IN THE FLOWER GARDEN. 

 By Mrs. Francis King, Alma, Michigan. 



Delivered before the Society, March 30, 1912. 



I stand here in some trepidation. When Mrs. Wharton, writ- 

 ing " The Fruit of the Tree " wished to send a suffering heroine to 

 a bourne whence few if any travelers return, she relegated her to 

 Michigan, a sentence, as one reads it, of exile, almost of death. And 

 in the light of such Eastern opinion of my adopted state and con- 

 sidering your most flattering suggestion that I, a dweller in Michi- 

 gan, should dare to discuss in Boston, the question of one aspect 

 of flower gardening, I am compelled to timidly ask myself, apolo- 

 gizing at the same time for my temerity, Can any good thing 

 come out of Michigan? 



With this genuinely deprecatory start, I will address myself 

 to the matter in hand and say that I rejoice to lift what voice 

 I have in defence of a subject not as yet commonly debated in 

 this country; hardly indeed considered here at all till within the 

 last ten years, yet of very vital importance to the bright and 

 alluring art of fine flower gardening — color arrangement in the 

 flower garden. 



The very broadest consideration of color in gardening would 

 turn our minds to the general color effect of a garden in relation to 

 its large setting of country. Was it not Ruskin who in spite of 

 his rages at the average mid-Victorian garden said that gardens 

 as well as houses should in general color harmonize with the sur- 

 rounding country; certain tones for the simple blue country of 

 England; others for the colder grey country of Italy. Never 

 was sounder color advice given than that contained in the fol- 

 lowing lines from one of the Oxford lectures — " Bluish purple 

 is the only flower color which nature ever used in masses of distant 

 effect; this, however, she does in the case of most heathers with the 



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